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MAR    4    1030 


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Divisi 

BX^937  .B83  P8  1906 
Brooks,  Phillips,  1835-1893 
Purpose  and  use  of  comfort, 
and  other  sermons 


The  Purpose  and  Use 
of  Comfort 


<>... 


And  Other  Sermons  Xi^OGi gal  8t 


By  the 
Rt.  Rev.  Phillips  Brooks,  D.D. 


First  Series 


N  E^V  YORK 

E  •  P  •  BUTTON  af  COMPANY 
31  West  Twenty-Third  Street 


Copyright,  1878 

Copyright,  1906 

By  E.  p.  DUTTON  AND  COMPANY 

First  Published  as 
"  Sermons  "  I. 


Press  of 

J.  J.  Little  &  Ives  Company 

New  York,  U.  S.  A. 


TO 

The  Three  Parishes 

which  it  has  been  his  privilege  to  serve, — 

THE  CHURCH  OF  THE  ADVENT,  PHILADELPHIA, 

THE  CHURCH  OF  THE  HOLY  TRINITY,  PHILADELPHIA, 

AND 

TRINITY  CHURCH,  BOSTON,— 

tlbese  Sermons 

ARE   AFFECTIONATELY   DEDICATED 
BY   THEIR 

Friend  and  Minister 


CONTENTS. 

SERMON  PAGB 

I.     The  Purpose  and  Use  of  Comfort         e        i 

"  Blessed  be  the  God  of  all  comfort,  who  comforteth 
us  in  all  our  tribulation,  that  we  may  be  able  to  com- 
fort  them  which  are  in  any  trouble,  by  the  comfort 
wherewith  we  ourselves  are  comforted  of  God."— 
2  Corinthians  i.  3,  4. 

II.     The  Withheld  Completions  of  Life  19 

"Peter  said  unto  Him,  Lord,  why  cannot  I  follow 
Thee  now?" — John  xiii.  37. 

ill.     The  Conqueror  from  Edom    ...      37 

*'  Who  is  this  that  cometh  from  Edom,  with  dyed 
garments  from  Bozrah  ?  " — Isaiah  Ixiii.  i. 

IV,     Keeping  the  Faith  .         =         .         .        .      57 
•'  I  have  kept  the  faith." — 2  TIMOTHY  iv.  7. 

Vc     The  Soul's  Refuge  in  God     .        ,        .      78 

"Thou  shalt  hide  them  in  the  secret  of  thy  presence 
from  the  pride  of  man.  Thou  shalt  keep  them  secretly 
in  a  pavilion  from  the  strife  of  tongues."— PsALM 
xxxi,  20. 

VI-    The  Consolations  of  God       ...      98 

"  Are  the  consolations  of  God  small  with  thee?'  — 
Job  XV.  II. 


vi  CONTENTS 

SERMON  FACB 

VII.     All  Saints'  Day    .        .        ,        .        ,117 

"  After  this  I  beheld,  and  lo,  a  great  multitude, 
which  no  man  could  number,  of  all  nations,  and 
kindreds,  and  people,  and  tongues,  stood  before  the 
throne,  and  before  the  Lamb,  clothed  with  white 
robes,  and  palms  in  their  hands;  and  cried  with  a 
loud  voice,  saying,  Salvation  to  our  God  which 
sitteth  upon  the  throne,  and  unto  the  Lamb,"— 
Revelation  vii.  9,  10. 

VITI.     The  Man  with  One  Talent         .        .     138 

•'  Then  he  which  had  received  the  one  taleut 
came." — Matthew  xxv.  24 

IX.     The  Present  and  Future  Faith  .     157 

"When  the  Son  of  Man  cometh,  shall  He  find 
faith  on  the  earth?" — Luke  xviii.  8. 

X.     Unspotted  from  the  World        .         .174 

"  And  to  keep  himself  unspotted  from  the  world." 
— James  i.  27. 

XI,     A  Good-Friday  Sermon         .        .        .     293 

**  Then  were  there  two  thieves  crucified  with  Him." 
— Matthew  xxvii.  38. 

"  I  am  crucified  with  Christ." — Galatians  ii.  ao. 

XII.     An  Easter  Sermon        ....     aio 

"And  He  laid  His  right  hand  upon  me,  saying 
unto  me.  Fear  not;  I  am  the  first  and  the  last:  I  am 
He  that  liveth,  and  was  dead;  and  behold,  I  am 
alive  for  evermore.  Amen;  and  have  the  keys  of  hell 
and  of  death."— Revelation  i.  17,  18. 

Xlli.     A  Trinity-Sunday  Sermon   .         .        .     228 

"  For  through  Him  we  both  have  access  by  oae 
Spirit  unto  the  Father." — Ephesians  ii.  18, 


CONTENTS 

SERMON 

XIV.    Is  IT  I  ? 

"  And  as  they  did  eat,  Jesus  said,  Verily  I  say 

unto  you,  that  one  of  you  shall  betray  me.     And 

they  were  exceeding  sorrowful,  and  began  every 

one  of  them  to  say  unto  him.    Lord,    Is   it   I?" 

Matthew  xxvi.  21,  22. 

XV.    The  Food  of  Man  .... 

"It  is  written,  Man  shall  not  live  by  bread 
alone." — Matthew  iv.  4. 

XVI.  The  Symbol  and  the  Reality 

"  The  sun  shall  be  no  more  thy  light  by  day; 
neither  for  brightness  shall  the  moon  give  light 
unto  thee:  but  the  Lord  shall  be  unto  thee  an  ever- 
lasting light,  and  thy  God  thy  Glory." 

Isaiah  Ix.  19. 

XVII.  Christ's  Wish  for  Man 

"  Father,  I  will  that  they  also  whom  Thou  hast 
given  me  be  with  me  where  I  am;  that  they  may 
behold  my  glory." — John  xvii.  24 

XVIII.  The  Shortness  of  Life 

"  Brethren,  the  time  is  short." — I  CoR.  vii.  29. 

XIX.    Humility 

"  And  be  clothed  with  humility."— I  Peter  v.  5. 

XX.    The  Positiveness  of  the  Divine  Life  . 

"  This  I  say  then.  Walk  in  the  Spirit,  and  ye 
shall  not  fulfil  the  lust  of  the  flesh." 

— Galatians  v.  16. 


VU 

PAGB 

247 


265 


282 


299 


31 


334 


353 


SERMONS. 


I. 

THE  PURPOSE  AND  USE  OF  COMFORT. 

"  Blessed  be  the  God  of  all  comfort,  who  comforteth  us  in  all  oar  iribu 
lAtioD,  that  we  may  be  able  to  comfort  them  which  are  in  any  trouble, 
hj  the  comfort  wherewith  we  ourselves  are  comforted  of  God  "  —  2  Cor. 
13,4. 

(  The  desire  for  comfort  may  be  a  very  high  or  a  very 
row,  a  noble  or  a  most  ignoble  wish.  It  is  like  the  love 
of  life,  the  wish  to  keep  on  living,  which  may  be  full 
of  courage  and  patience,  or  may  be  nothing  but  a  cow- 
ardly fear  of  death.  "We  know  what  kind  of  comfort  it 
must  have  been  that  St.  Paul  prayed  for,  and  for  which 
he  was  thankful  when  it  came.  We  have  all  probably 
desired  comfort  which  he  would  have  scorned,  and  prayed 
to  God  in  tones  which  he  would  have  counted  unworthy 
alike  of  God  and  of  himself. 

And  the  difference  in  the  way  in  which  people  ask 
comfort  of  God,  no  doubt,  depends  very  largely  upon  the 
reason  why  they  ask  it,  upon  what  it  is  that  makes  them 
wish  that  God  would  take  away  their  pain  and  comfort 
them.  The  nobleness  of  actions,  we  all  know,  depends 
more  upon  the  reasons  why  we  do  them  than  on  the  acta 
themselves.  Very  few  acts  are  so  essentially  noble  that 
they  may  not  be  done  for  an  ignoble  reason,  and  so  be- 
'X>Q\o  ignoble.    Very  few  acts  are  so  absolutely  mean  that 


2         THE  PURPOSE  AND  USE  OF  COMFORT. 

some  light  may  not  be  cast  through  them  by  a  bright  mo- 
tive burning  within.  And  so  it  is  not  merely  with  what 
^e  do,  but  with  what  happens  to  us.  It  is  not  our  fort- 
une in  life,  our  sorrow,  or  our  joy ;  it  is  the  explanation 
which  we  give  of  it  to  ourselves,  the  depth  to  which  we 
see  down  into  it,  that  makes  our  lives  significant  or  in- 
significant to  us. 

All  this,  I  think,  applies  to  what  St.  Paul  says  about 
the  comfort  which  God  had  given  him.  He  gave  to  it  its 
deepest  and  most  unselfish  reason,  and  so  the  fact  of 
God's  comforting  him  became  the  exaltation  and  the 
strengthening  of  his  life.  I  should  like  to  study  his  feel- 
ing about  it  all  with  you  this  morning.  Out  of  your 
closets  and  pews,  from  many  hearts  that  need  it,  hearts 
sore  and  wounded  with  the  world,  there  go  up  prayers 
for  comfort.  This  verse  of  St.  Paul  seems  to  me  to  shine 
with  a  supreme  motive  for  such  prayers  as  those,  a  mo- 
tive which  perhaps  as  we  first  look  at  it  will  seem  over- 
strained and  impossible ;  but  which  I  hope  we  shall  see  is 
really  capable  of  being  felt,  and  of  stirring  to  their  deep- 
est depths  the  desire  and  the  gratitude  of  a  strong  man. 

It  does  not  matter  what  the  special  trouble  was  for 
which  God  had  comforted  St.  Paul.  It  happened  to  be  a 
certain  deep  anxiety  about  his  church  at  Corinth.  But 
it  might  have  been  anything.  The  point  is  this  —  that 
Paul  thanked  God  because  the  comfort  which  had  come 
to  him  gave  him  the  power  to  comfort  other  people^ 
"  Blessed  be  the  God  of  all  comfort,  who  comforteth  ufc 
in  all  our  tribulation,  that  we  may  be  able  to  comfort 
them  which  are  in  any  trouble."  Now,  my  dear  friends, 
try  to  recall  the  joy  and  peace  and  thankfulness  that 
have  ever  filled  your  hearts  when  you  became  thoroughly 


THE  PURPOSE  AND  USE  OF  COMFORT.         a 

miG  that  God  had  relieved  you  from  some  great  dan- 
ger, or  opened  His  hand  and  shed  upon  you  some  great 
blessing.  Think  how  you  thanked  Him.  Remember 
how  the  sense  that  He  loved  you  occupied  your  sonL 
Think  how  your  sense  of  privilege  exalted  you  and  sol- 
emnized you.  Think  how  your  own  happiness  filled  you 
with  kindliness  to  other  people.  But  ask  yourself  at 
the  same  time,  "  Did  any  such  thought  as  this  come  up 
first  and  foremost  to  my  mind,  and  seem  to  me  the  most 
precious  part  of  all  my  blessing,  that  God  had  done  thia 
for  me  just  to  make  me  a  fitter  and  more  transparent 
medium  through  which  He  might  send  his  comfort  to 
other  men  ?  Wlien  He  lifted  me  up  from  the  gates  of 
death  did  I  thank  Him  most  of  all  that  my  experience 
of  danger  and  deliverance  had  made  clear  to  some  poor 
sufferer  beside  me  how  truly  our  God  is  the  Lord  of  life 
and  death  ?  When  He  came  and  filled  with  His  own 
presence  the  awful  blank  of  my  bereavement,  did  I  praise 
Him  most  devoutly  that  my  refilled  and  recreated  life 
could  become  a  gospel  to  other  men  of  the  satisfaction 
of  His  perfect  friendship  ? "  But  this  was  the  beauty 
of  God's  comfort  to  St.  Paul.  "Blessed  be  God  who 
comforteth  us,  that  we  may  be  able  to  comfort  them 
which  are  in  any  trouble." 

In  the  first  place,  then,  I  think  the  power  of  Paul  or  of 
any  man  to  grasp  and  realize  this  high  idea  of  the  pur- 
pose  of  the  help  which  God  sends,  shows  a  very  clear  un  X 
derstanding  that  it  is  really  God  who  sends  the  help.  In- 
deed, I  think  no  man  can  really  mount  up  to  the  idea  that 
God  truly  and  personally  cares  for  him  enough  to  reach 
down  and  turn  the  bitterness  of  his  cup  to  sweetness, 
without  being,  as  it  were,  compelled  to  look  beyond  hini' 


4  THE   PURPOSE   AND   USE  OF  COMFORT. 

3elf.  All  strong  emotions,  all  really  great  ideas,  outgo  mt 
individual  life,  and  make  us  feel  our  human  nature.  If 
you  are  not  sure  that  any  mercy  comes  to  you  from  God ; 
If,  whatever  pious  words  you  use  about  it,  the  recovei-y 
of  your  health,  or  the  saving  of  your  fortune,  seems  to 
you  a  piece  of  luck,  some  good  thing  which  has  dropped 
ilown  upon  you  from  the  clouds,  then  you  may  be  meanly 
:tnd  miserably  selfish  about  it.  You  shut  it  up  wittixn  the 
jealous  walls  of  your  own  life.  It  is  a  light  which  you 
have  struck  out  for  yourself,  and  may  burn  in  your  own 
lantern.  But  if  the  light  came  down  from  God,  if  He 
gave  you  this  blessing,  it  is  too  big  for  you  to  keep  tc 
yourself.  He  must  have  meant  it  for  a  wider  circle  than 
your  little  life  can  cover,  and  it  breaks  through  your  self- 
ishness to  find  for  itself  the  mission  that  it  claims.  Oh,  if 
men  who  are  disgusted  at  their  own  selfishness  and  unsym- 
pathetic narrowness,  and  who  try  to  break  through  it  and 
come  to  their  fellow-men  in  love,  but  cannot,  would  learn 
this  higher  and  profounder  method,  that  the  only  way 

\,  really  to  come  close  to  and  to  care  for  men  is  to  realize 
God;  the  only  way  to  love  the  children  is  to  know  the 
Father  ;  the  only  way  to  make  it  our  joy  and  mission  to 
help  mankind  is  to  feel  all  through  us  the  certainty  that 
tlie  help  which  has  come  to  us  has  come  from  God  I 

Go  on  a  little  farther.  A  man  whose  first  thought 
al>out  any  mercy  to  himself  is  that  God  means  by  it  to 
help  other  people,  must  have  something  else  besides  this 
strong  belief  that  his  mercy  does  really  come  from  God. 

^^     He  must  have  a  genuine  unselfishness  and  a  true  humil- 
■       ity.     He  must  have  a  habit  of  looking  out  beyond  him- 
self, a  yearning  and  instinctive  wish  to  know  how  what 
comes  to  him  will  change  the  lot  and  life  of  other  people 


X 


THE   PURPOSE  AND   USE   OF   COMFORT.  $ 

and,  along  with  this,  a  lowly  estimate  of  his  own  self,  a 
true  humbleness  of  self-esteem.    Put  these  together  into 
a  nature  and  you  clear  away  those  obstructions  which,  in 
BO_many  men,  stop  God's  mercies  short,  and  absorb,  aa 
personal  privileges,  what  they  were  meant  to  radiate  aa 
blessings  to  mankind.     Think  of  it  even  in  reference  to 
the  lowest  things.    Who  is  the  man  whom  we  rejoice  to 
Bee  possessing  wealth  ?     Who  is  the  man  whose  making 
money  on  the  street  delights  us,  because  it  means  bene- 
faction and  help  to  other  men?     It  is  the  reverent,  the 
unselfish,  and  the  humble  man.    It  is  the  man  who,  as  the 
treasure   pours  in  at    his    doors,  stands  saying  over  it, 
'*  God  sent  this ;  "  and,  "  I  am  not  worthy  of  this ;   He 
could  not  have  sent  it  just  for  me ;  "  and,  "  Where  are  ■ 
my    brethren  ? "    Reverence,    Humility,    Unselfishness.  L. 
Those  are  the  elements  of  true  stewardship  even  in  the    ^ 
lowest  things,  and  also  in  the  highest.     Who  is  the  man 
who,  in  his  bereavement  or  his  pain,  receiving  comfort 
from  God  radiates  it,  so  that  the  world  is  richer  by  the 
help  the  Lord  has  given  him?     It  is  the  reverent,  the   - 
unselfish,  and  the  humble  man.     The  sunlight  falls  upon 
a  clod,  and  the  clod  drinks  it  in,  is  warmed  by  it  itself, 
but  lies  as  black  as  ever,  and  sheds  out  no  light.     But 
the   sun   touches  a  diamond,   and   the  diamond   almost 
chills  itself  as  it  sends  out  in  radiance  on  every  side  the 
light  that  has  fallen  on  it.     So  God  helps  one  man  bea? 
liis   pail.,  and  nobody  but  that  one  man  is  a  whit  th 
richer.    God  comes  to  another  sufferer,  reverent,  unself- 
ish, humble,  and  the  lame  leap,  and  the  dumb  speak,  and 
the  wretched  are  comforted  all  around  by  the  radiated  .1^ 
comfort  of  that  happy  soul.     Our  lot  has  been  dark  in- 
leed  if  we  have  not  known  some  souls,  reverent,  unselfish, 


6  THE   PURPOiiE   AND    USE   OF  COMFORT. 

humble,  who  not  merely  caught  and  drank  in  themselves, 
but  poured  out  on  other  sufferers,  on  us,  the  comfort  of 
God. 

I  know  one  danger  which  I  may  seem  to  incur  as  I 
epeak  thus.  It  may  appear  as  if  in  order  to  find  a  deep, 
far-reaching  purpose  in  God's  goodness  to  our  souls,  to 
trace  it  out  into  designs  for  other  people,  we  had  to  take 
away  something  from  its  freedom  and  spontaneousness  , 
as  if  it  interfered  with  that  first  consciousness  of  the  re- 
ligious life,  the  first  and  most  surprising,  as  it  is  also  the 
last  and  sweetest  and  most  inexhaustible,  that  God  loves 
each  of  us  distinctly,  separately,  and  blesses  each  of  us  out 
of  His  personal  love.  Nothing  must  interfere  with  that. 
Whatever  mercy  falls  into  our  lot  must  be  felt  warm 
with  the  personal  love  of  Him  who  sends  it.  It  would  be 
better  to  lose  all  the  larger  and  longer  thoughts  of  God's 
care  for  the  world,  and  think  of  Him,  as  men  have 
thought,  merely  in  the  light  of  His  love  for  the  individual, 
than  to  become  so  absorbed  in  the  larger  thought  that 
the  individual  should  seem  to  be  only  the  unconsidered 
machinery  through  which  His  power  reached  the  world, 
blessed  by  accident,  as  it  were,  and  on  the  way,  as  the 
blessing  sped  to  some  moi'e  general  and  distant  need. 
But  we  are  reduced  to  no  such  dilemma.  The  simpler 
ideas  of  religion  include  the  more  profound,  and  open 
into  them  without  losing  their  own  simplicity.  The  soul, 
I  think,  which  has  really  reached  the  idea  that  what  God 
does  for  it  has  purposes  beyond  it  in  the  good  of  others, 
comes  to  a  deeper  knowledge  of  the  love  of  God  for  it. 
It  finds  itself  honored  with  confidence  and  use,  as  well  as 
gratified  with  happiness.  The  older  children  of  a  family 
gradually  come  to  the  knowledge  of  what  deeper  purposes 


THE  PURPOSE  AND  USE  OF   COMFORT.  7 

run  through  the  government  of  the  household.     When  a 
child  is  young,  it  seems  as  if  his  father's  purpose  concern- 
ing him  were  just  that  he  should  find  every  hour  pleasant, 
and  be  happy  all  the  time.     As  he  grows  up  he  learns 
that  his  father  is  treating  him  with  reference  to  some 
thing  which  lies  deeper  than  his  happiness,  and  also  that 
what  his  father  does  to  him  has  reference  to  the  whole 
family,  and  is  part  of  a  larger  scheme.     Does  that  lessen 
the  warmth  of   his   personal  gratitude  and   love?     Not 
unless  he  is  a  very  mean-minded  and  jealous  child  indeed. 
If  he  has  any  largeness  of  character,  it  all  comes  out.     A 
new  sacredness  appears  in  the  kindness  when  its  designs 
are  known,  and  as  gratitude  grows  reasonable  it  growa 
deeper.     So  it  is  with  gi-atitude  to  God.     The  supersti- 
tious devotee  begs  for  a  kindness  which  is  to  have  no  end 
beyond  himself.     He  asks  for  comfort  and  help  as  if  he.l^ 
had  to  tease  it  from  a  God  of  whims ;  but  the  Christian 
asks,  as  his  highest  privilege,  to  be  taken  into  the  pur- 
poses of  a  purposeful  Father,  and  counts  it  the  best  part 
of   the   stream  which  refreshes  his  life,  that  it  goes  on 
through  his  to  refresh  some  other  life  beyond.    Oh,  let  us 
never  fear  that  in  making  God  considerate  and  reason- 
able we  shall  lose  His  affection  ;  let  us  never  try  to  keep 
His  love  by  denying  His  law.     Let  us  be  sure  that  the 
more  we  realize  His  vaster  purposes,  the  more  dearly  we 
can  feel  His  personal  care. 

And  one  thing  more  let  me  say  here.  This  higher 
thought  of  God  and  His  blessings  will  always  be  easier 
and  more  real  to  us  in  proportion  as  we  dwell  habitually 
upon  the  profounder  and  more  spiritual  of  His  mercies, 
if  what  I  am  in  the  habit  of  thanking  God  for  is  mainly 
food  and  clothes  and  house,  it  will  not  be  easy  for  me  to 


v;/ 


k 


*i  THE  PURPOSE  AND   USE   OF  COMFORT. 

realize  the  deepest  purpose  for  which  God  gives  me  thosa 
things  ;  it  will  be  ver}'^  easy  for  me  to  take  them  as  il 
the  final  purpose  of  them  was  that  I  might  be  warm  and 
well-fed.  But  if  what  I  thank  Ilim  for  is  spiritual 
strength,  the  way  in  which  He  helps  me  bear  pain,  resist 
temptation,  and  feed  upon  spiritual  joy,  —  in  one  word,  if 
what  I  thank  Him  for  most  is  not  that  He  gives  me  his 
^  gifts,  but  that  He  gives  me  Himself,  — then  I  cannot  re- 
sist the  tendency  of  that  mercy  to  outgrow  my  life.  The 
more  spiritual  is  a  man's  religion,  the  more  expansive 
and  broad  it  always  is.  A  stream  may  leave  its  deposits 
in  the  pool  it  flows  through,  but  the  stream  itself  hurries 
on  to  other  pools  in  the  thick  woods  ;  and  so  God's  gifts 
a  soul  may  selfishly  appropriate,  but  God  Himself,  the 
more  truly  a  soul  possesses  Him,  the  more  truly  it  will 
long  and  try  to  share  Him. 

Thus  I  have  tried  to  picture  the  man  who,  in  thfl  pro- 
foundest  way  accepts  and  values  God's  mercies.  You 
see  how  clear  his  superiority  is.  The  Pharisee  says,  "  I 
thank  Thee  that  I  am  not  as  other  men  are,"  and  evi- 
dently it  is  his  difference  from  other  men  that  he  values 
most,  and  he  means  to  keep  himself  different  from  other 
men  as  long  as  possible.  The  Christian  says,  "  I  thank 
Thee  that  Thou  hast  made  me  this,  because  it  is  a  sign 
and  may  be  made  a  means  of  bringing  other  men  to  the 
same  help  and  joy."  You  see  how  different  the  two  mei 
are  :  one  is  hard  and  selfish  ;  the  other  is  warm  and  gen 
erous.  And  yet  there  must  be  people  here  this  morning 
wHo  have  knelt  side  by  side  and  both  said  sincerely, "  We 
bless  Thee  for  our  creation,  preservation,  and  all  the 
blessings  of  this  life,"  who  were  as  far  apart  from  one 
(inothe;  as  the  Pharisee  is  from  the  Christian  spirit. 


THE   PURPOSE   AKD    USE   UF   COMFOKT.  9 

Bit  having  said  thus  much  in  general  about  the  waj 
m  which  men  receive  God's  comforts,  now  I  should  like 
to  take,  one  after  another,  a  few  of  the  special  helps 
which  God  gives  to  men,  and  see,  very  briefl}^  how  what 
I  have  been  saying  applies  to  each  of  them. 

The  first  of  the  comforts  of  God  to  which  I  would 
apply  our  truth  is  the  comfort  which  God  sends  a  man 
when  he  is  in  religious  doubt.  And  that  does  not  by  any 
means  always  take  the  shape  of  a  solution  of  his  difficul- 
ties, and  a  filling  of  every  darkness  with  perfect  light. 
God  may  do  that.  God  does  often  do  that  for  men.  I 
think  that  none  of  us  ever  ought  to  believe  that  any  re- 
ligious difficulty  of  his  is  hopeless,  and  to  give  it  up  in 
despair.  We  ought  always  to  stand  looking  at  every 
such  difficulty,  owning  its  darkness,  but  ready  to  see  it 
brighten  as  the  east  brightens  with  the  rising  of  the  sun 
Many  of  our  religious  doubts  are  like  buildings  which 
stand  beside  the  road  which  we  are  travelling,  which,  aa 
we  first  come  in  sight  of  them,  we  cannot  understand. 
They  are  all  in  confusion.  They  show  no  plan.  We 
have  come  on  them  from  the  rear,  from  the  wrong  side. 
But,  as  we  travel  on,  the  road  sweeps  round  them.  We 
3ome  in  front  of  them.  Their  design  unsnarls  itself, 
And  we  understand  the  beauty  of  wall  and  tower  and 
window.  So  we  come  to  many  religious  questions  from 
the  rear,  from  the  wrong  side.  Let  us  keep  on  along  the 
)pen  road  of  righteousness.  Some  day  we  shall  perhaps 
ace  them  and  see  their  orderly  beauty. 

No  doubt  God  does  thus  answer  our  questions  for  us 
sometimes  if  we  will  "  walk  in  His  ways."  But  he  knows 
little  of  the  abundance  of  God's  mercy  who  thinks  that 
there  is  no  other  comfort  for  the  doubtino-  man  than  this. 


10  THE   PURPOSE   AND   USE   OF   COMFORT. 

He  has  had  little  experience  of  God  who  has  not  oftee 
felt  how  sometimes,  with  a  question  still  unanswered,  a 
deep  doubt  in  the  soul  unsolved,  the  Father  will  fold 
about  His  doubting  child  a  sense  of  Himself  so  deep,  ao 
true,  so  self-witnessing,  that  the  child  is  content  to  carry 
his  unanswered  question  because  of  the  unanswerable  as- 
surance of  his  Father  which  he  has  received.  Is  that 
a  fancy  ?  Surely  not.  Surely  you  are  comforting  your 
child  just  in  that  way  every  day ;  comfortmg  him  with 
your  love,  and  the  peace  of  your  presence,  which  passeth 
all  his  understanding,  for  the  hundred  questions  which 
you  cannot  answer,  and  the  hundred  puzzles  which  you 
cannot  make  him  understand.  Suppose  God  gives  that 
sort  of  comfort  to  any  man.  Thenceforth  the  doubter 
goes  with  his  curious  doubts,  not  solved,  but  wrapt  about 
and  lost  in  the  richness  of  a  personal  faith.  But  tell  me, 
is  it  the  gain  of  that  one  doubter  only  ?  Is  the  world  no 
richer?  Is  no  other  questioner  helped  ?  Oh,  when  I  see 
how  few  men  are  aided  by  the  arguments  with  which 
their  friends  plead  for  their  faith,  compared  with  those  to 
whom  religion  becomes  a  clear  reality  from  the  sight  of 
Bome  fellow-man  who  is  evidently  living  with  God,  who 
caiTies  the  life  of  God  wherever  he  goes  ;  when  I  see  how 
ihe  real  difficulty  of  multitudes  of  bewildered  men  is  not 
this  or  that  unsolved  problem,  but  the  whole  incapacity  of 
comprehending  God ;  when  I  see  this,  I  understand  how 
the  best  boon  that  God  can  give  to  any  group  of  men 
must  often  be  to  take  one  of  them  —  the  greatest  of  them 
it  may  be,  the  least  of  them  it  may  be  —  and,  bearing  wit- 
ness of  Himself  to  him,  set  him  to  bearing  that  witness 
of  the  Lord  to  his  brethren  which  only  a  man  surrounded 
and  filled  with  God  can  bear. 


THE  PUBPOSE  AlID   USE   OF  COMFORT.  11 

And  when  we  look  at  the  other  side,  at  the  doubtei 
himself,  and  his  feeling  about  the  removal  of  his  doubt,  it 
is  oven  more  plain.  I  can  find  no  certainty  about  relig- 
ious things,  and  I  hardly  dare  ask  for  certainty.  It  seems 
Uke  haggling  and  arguing  with  God  to  tell  him  of  my 
doabts.  Who  am  I  that  He  should  care  to  convince  me 
and  answer  my  questions  ?  It  is  a  bad  mood,  but  it  is 
common  enough.  But  if  I  can  count  my  enlightenment 
as  something  greater  than  my  own  release  from  doubt ;  if 
I  can  see  it  as  part  of  the  process  by  which  "  the  light 
that  lighteneth  every  man  "  is  slowly  spreading  through 
the  world,  then  it  no  longer  is  insignificant.  I  dare  to 
hope  for  it.  I  dare  to  pray  for  it.  I  make  myself  ready 
for  it.  I  cast  aside  frivolity  and  despair,  the  two  benight- 
eners  of  the  human  soul,  and  when  God  comes  and  over, 
under,  nay,  through  every  doubt  proves  Himself  to  me,  I 
take  Him  with  a  certainty  which  is  as  humble  as  it  ia 
solemn  and  sure. 

2.  Turn  to  another  of  the  consolations  which  God  sends 
to  men :  the  way  He  proves  to  us  that  the  soul  is  more 
than  the  body.  In  the  breakage  or  decay  of  physical 
power  He  brings  out  spiritual  richness  and  strength. 
This  was  something  that  St.  Paul  knew  well.  Only  two 
chapters  later  in  this  same  epistle  there  comes  the  great 
verse  where  he  describes  it.  "  Though  our  outward  man 
perish,  yet  the  inward  man  is  renewed  day  by  day.'*  It 
is  something  whose  experience  is  repeated  constantly  on 
every  side  of  us.  It  is  hard  for  us  to  imagine  how  flat 
and  shallow  human  life  would  be  if  there  were  taken  out 
of  it  this  constant  element,  the  coming  up  of  the  spiritual 
where  the  physical  has  failed  ;  and  so,  as  the  result  of 
this,  the  impression,  made  even  upon  men  who  seem  to 


12  THE   PURPOSE   AND    USE    OF   COMFORT. 

trust  most  in  the  physical,  that  there  is  a  spiritual  life 
which  lies  deeper,  on  which  their  profoundest  reliance 
must  and  may  be  placed.  A  man  who  has  been  in  the 
full  whirl  of  prosperous  business  fails  in  these  hard- 
pressed  days,  and  tlien  for  the  first  time  he  learns  the  joy 
of  conscious  integrity  preserved  through  all  temptations, 
and  of  daily  trust  in  God  for  daily  bread.  A  man  who 
never  knew  an  ache  or  pain  comes  to  a  break  in  health, 
from  which  he  can  look  out  into  nothing  but  years  of 
sickness ;  and  then  the  soul  within  him,  which  has  been 
80  borne  along  in  the  torrent  of  bodily  health  that  it  baa 
seemed  almost  like  a  mere  part  and  consequence  of  the 
bodily  condition,  separates  itself,  claims  its  independence 
and  supremacy,  and  stands  strong  in  the  midst  of  weak- 
ness, calm  in  the  very  centre  of  the  turmoil  and  panic 
of  the  aching  body.  The  temper  of  the  fickle  people 
changes,  and  the  favorite  of  yesterday  becomes  the  victim 
of  to-day ;  but  in  his  martyrdom  for  the  first  time  he  sees 
Ihe  full  value  of  the  truth  he  dies  for,  and  thanks  the 
flames  that  have  lighted  up  its  preciousness.  Now  ask 
yourself  in  all  these  cases  if  it  must  not  be  an  element  in 
the  comfort  which  fills  the  sick  room,  or  gathers  about  the 
martyr's  stake,  that  by  this  revelation  of  the  spiritual 
through  the  broken  physical  life  other  men  may  learn  its 
value.  This  is  what  makes  the  sick  rooms  and  the  mar« 
tyr  fires  reasonable.  In  them  has  been  made  manifest 
by  suffering  that  the  soul  is  really  more  than  the  body 
that  the  soul  can  triumph  when  the  body  has  nothing  left 
but  disease  and  misery.  There  are  young  people  here 
looking  forward  to  their  lives,  wondering  what  God  haa 
in  roserve  for  them  in  these  mysteriovis  and  beautiful 
yeaia  which  lie  before  them.    It  may  be  health,  strength, 


THE  PURPOSE  AND  USE  OF  COMFORT.        13 

]oy,  activity.  I  trust  it  is.  But  you  must  own  that  it 
would  be  no  sign  oi  God's  displeasure,  but  rather  of  Hia 
truest  love,  if  the  life  which  He  assigned  should  prove  to 
be  all  comprised  in  this :  that  by  some  form  of  suffering 
and  disappointment  you  were  first  to  find  out  for  yourself, 
and  then  to  manifest  to  some  circle  of  your  fellow-men, 
that  the  soul  is  more  precious  than  the  body,  and  has  a 
happiness  and  strength  which  no  bodily  experience  can 
touch.  What  would  you  not  suffer  if  your  life  could  bo 
made  a  beacon  to  show  the  world  that  ? 

This  is  the  secret  of  great  men.  And  in  all  the  greatest 
men  there  is  some  sense  of  this  always  present.  No  man 
has  come  to  true  greatness  who  has  not  felt  in  some  de- 
gree that  his  life  belongs  to  his  race,  and  that  what  God 
gives  him  He  gives  him  for  mankind.  The  different  de- 
grees of  this  consciousness  are  really  what  makes  the  dif^X 
ferent  degrees  of  greatness  in  men.  If  you  take  your  man 
full  of  acuteness,  at  the  top  of  his  specialty,  of  vast  knowl- 
edge, of  exhaustless  skill,  and  ask  yourself  where  the  mys- 
terious lack  is  which  keeps  you  from  thinking  that  man 
great,  —  why  it  is  that  although  he  may  be  a  great  nat- 
uralist, or  a  great  merchant,  or  a  great  inventor,  he  is  not 
a  great  man,  —  the  answer  will  be  here,  that  he  is  selfish : 
that  what  God  gives  him  stops  in  himself ;  that  he  has  no 
Buch  essential  humanity  as  to  make  his  life  a  reservoir 
from  which  refreshment  is  distributed,  or  a  point  of  radia- 
tion for  God's  light.  And  then  if  you  take  another  man, 
rude,  simple,  untaught,  in  whom  it  is  hard  to  find  special 
attainments  or  striking  points  of  character,  but  whom  you 
instinctively  call  great,  and  ask  yourself  the  reason  of  that 
instinct,  I  think  you  find  it  in  the  fact  that  that  man  haa 
this  Quality:  that  his  life  does  takp  all  which  it  receives. 


14  THE  PURPOSE   AND   USE   OF   COMFORT. 

not  for  its  own  use  but  in  trust ;  that  in  the  highest  sense 
it  is  unselfish,  so  that  by  it  God  reaches  men,  and  it  is 
His  greatness  that  you  feel  in  it.  Fqr^reatness  after 
all,  in  spite  of  its  name,  appears  to  be  not  so  much  a  cer- 
tain size  as  a  certain  quality  in  human  lives.  It  may  bo 
present  in  lives  whose  range  is  very  small.  There  is 
greatness  in  a  mother's  life  whose  utter  unselfishness  fills 
her  household  with  the  life  and  love  of  God,  transmitted 
through  her  consecration.  There  is  greatness  in  a  child's 
life  who  is  patient  under  a  wrong  and  shows  the  world 
at  some  new  point  the  dignity  of  self-restraint  and  the 
beauty  of  conquered  passions.  And  thence  we  rise  until 
we  come  to  Christ  and  find  the  perfection  of  His  human 
greatness  in  His  transmissiveness ;  in  the  fact  that  what 
He  was  as  man,  He  was  not  for  Himself  alone  but  for  all 
men,  for  mankind.  All  through  the  range  of  human  life, 
from  lowest  up  to  highest,  any  religious  conception  of 
human  greatness  must  be  ultimately  reducible  to  this :  a 
quality  in  any  man  by  which  he  is  capable  first  of  taking 
into  himself,  and  then  of  distributing  through  himself  to 
others,  some  part  of  the  life  of  God. 

I  spoke  just  now  of  Jesus  and  His  greatness.  It  seems 
to  me  that  most  of  the  struggles  of  theology  to  define 
His  work  are  really  trying  to  get  hold  of  and  utter  this 
idea:  that  in  Him  was  the  perfect  power  of  uttering  God 
to  men  and  of  being  full  of  God  not  for  Himself  only  but 
for„xnankind.  His  headship  of  our  race.  His  mediator- 
iship,  His  atonement,  are  various  ways  of  stating  this  idea. 
Everything  that  He  was  and  did.  He  was  and  did  for  us. 
He  lived  his  life.  He  died  his  death,  for  us.  He  took  sor- 
row for  us.  He  took  joy  and  comfort  for  us  also.  Let 
me  not  say  that  Chpst  saves  us  only  by  what  He  suffered 


THE  PURPOSE  AND   USE   OF  COMFORT.  16 

for  US.  He  saves  us  by  what  He  enjoyed  for  us  too.  The 
completeness  and  unity  of  His  salvation  lies  in  the  com- 
pleteness and  unity  with  which  His  whole  life,  in  its  joy 
and  pain  together,  lies  between  us  and  God,  so  thai 
through  it  God  comes  to  us  and  we  go  to  God.  Let  ofl 
always  pray  that  we  may  lose  the  blessing  of  no  part  of 
the  complete  mediatorship  of  our  Mediator. 

3.  There  is  one  other  of  the  comforts  of  God  to  which 
I  hoped  that  we  might  apply  our  truth,  but  I  must  take 
only  a  moment  for  it.  I  mean  the  comfort  which  God 
gives  a  man  who  has  found  out  his  sin  and  has  repented  of 
it.  That  comfort  is  forgiveness,  —  forgiveness  promised 
by  Christ,  assured  by  the  whole  loving  nature  of  God, 
and  sealed  by  the  new  life  of  thankful  obedience  which 
begins  at  once  in  the  forgiven  man.  And  what  shall  we 
say  of  that  forgiveness  ?  Is  it  only  for  the  forgiven  man 
that  it  is  bestowed,  that  God  loves  to  bestow  it  so  ?  It 
often  seems  to  me  as  if  we  took  too  low  a  ground  in 
pleading  with  the  man  living  in  sin  and  indifference  to 
turn  around,  to  be  converted  and  live  another  life.  We 
tell  him  of  his  danger.  That  puts  it  on  the  lowest  ground 
We  assure  him  that  no  man  can  go  on  in  wilful  sin  in  a 
universe  over  which  a  good  God  reigns,  without  sooner 
oi  later  coming  to  unhappiness,  nay,  without  really  being 
in  unhappiness  all  the  time,  however  it  may  seem  to  him. 
We  go  higher  than  that :  we  tell  him  of  the  happiness  of 
the  life  with  God.  We  assure  him  of  faculties  in  himself, 
capable  of  a  kind  of  pleasure  which  he  does  not  know, 
which  will  come  out  to  their  true  enjoyment  if  he  will 
only  come  to  God.  We  tell  him  of  the  heaven  of  the 
inner  life  here,  and  then  point  onward  to  the  dim  but 
certain  joys  of  the  heaven  that  stands  with  its  golden 


16        THE  PURPOSE  AND  USE  OF  COMFORT. 

walls  and  gates  of  pearl  in  the  splendor  of  the  revelation 
there.  Many  men  hear  and  believe.  Many  men  hear  and 
do  not  believe.  Suppose  we  took  a  higher  strain  ;  sup- 
pose Tve  cast  all  selfishness  aside  ;  suppose  we  pointet' 
to  a  world  all  full  of  wickedness,  a  world  self-willed,  rt' 
bellious  against  God ;  suppose  we  went  to  men  and  said : 
•' Thiidv  of  this.  Every  lime  any  man  humbly  takes 
God's  forgiveness,  enters  into  Christ's  service,  begins  a 
godly  life,  that  man  becomes  a  new  witness  to  this  world 
of  how  strong  and  good  the  Saviour  is.  Here  is  Christ. 
There  are  the  men  who  need  Him.  If  you  will  let  Him 
fill  and  possess  your  life,  He  will  make  these  men  see  Him 
through  you.  And  look,  how  they  need  to  see  Him  ! 
Not  for  yourself  now,  but  for  them,  for  Him,  take  His 
forgiveness  and  give  up  yourself  inwardly  and  outwardly 
to  Him."  So  used  one  grows  to  find  men  respond  to  the 
noblest  motives  who  are  deaf  to  a  motive  which  is  less 
noble,  that  I  am  ready  to  believe  that  there  are  men 
among  you,  whose  faces  I  know,  whom  I  have  so  often 
urged  to  be  Christians,  who  might  feel  this  higher  appeal. 
Is  it  nothing  that  by  a  new  purity  and  devotion  in  youi 
life,  brought  there  by  obedience  to  Christ,  you  may  help 
men  out  of  their  sins  to  Him  ?  His  promises  seem  to 
the  men  you  meet  too  good  to  be  true,  so  glorious  and 
BW3et  that  they  are  unreal.  Take  them  to  yourself.  Let 
them  shine  in  their  manifest  power  through  the  familiar 
windows  of  your  life.  Be  a  new  man  in  Christ  for  theae 
men's  sake.  Put  your  hand  in  His,  that  as  He  leads  you 
other  men,  who  have  turned  away  from  Him,  may  look 
and  see  you  walking  with  Him,  learn  to  love  Him  through 
your  love.  I  do  not  believe  any  man  ever  yet  genuinely, 
humbly,  thoroughly  gave  himself  to  Christ  without  some 


THE  PURPOSE  AND  USE  OF  COMFORT.        17 

otier  finding  Christ  through  him.    I  wish  it  might  tempt 
gome   of  your  souls  to  the  higher  life.     I  hope  it  may. 
At  least  I  am  sure  that  it  may  add  a  new  sweetness  and 
nobleness  to  the  consecration  which  some  young  heart  is 
making  of  itself  to-day,  if  it  can  hear,  down  the  new  path 
on  which  it  is  entering,  not  merely  the  great  triumphant 
chant  of  personal  salvation,  "Unto  Him  that  loved  ua 
and  washed  us  from  our  sins  be  glory  and  dominion  ; " 
but  also  the  calmer,  deeper  thanksgiving  for  usefulness, 
"  Blessed  be  the  God  of  comfort,  who  comforteth  us  that 
we  may  be  able  to  comfort  them  that  are  in  tribulation." 
Such  are  a  few  of  the  illustrations  and  applications  of 
the  truth  which  I  have  tried  to  define  and  to  urge  upon 
you  this  morning.     The  truth  is  that  we  are    our  best 
when  we  try  to  be  it  not  for  ourselves  alone,  but  for  our 
brethren  ;  and  that  we  take  God's  gifts  most  completely 
for  ourselves  when  we  realize  that  He  sends  them  to  us 
for  the  benefit  of  other  men,  who  stand  beyond  us  need- 
int?  them.     I  have  spoken  very  feebly,  unless  you  have 
felt  something  of  the  difference  which  it  would  make  to 
all  of   us  if  this  truth  really  took  possession  of  us.     It 
would   make   our  struggles  after  a  higher  life  so  much 
more  intense  as  they  become  more  noble.     "  For  their 
sakes  I  sanctify  myself,"  said  Jesus  ;  and  He  hardly  ever 
said  words  more  wonderful  than  those.     There  was  the 
power  by  which  He  was  holy  ;  the  world  was  to  be  made 
holy,  was  to  be  sanctified  through  Him.     I  am  sure  that 
you  or  I  could  indeed  be  strengthened  to  meet  some  great 
experience  of  pain  if  we  really  believed  that  by  our  suf- 
fei-ing  we  were  to  be  made  luminous  with  help  to  other 
men.     They  are  to  get  from  us  painlessly  what  we  have 
^ot  most  painfully  from  God.     There  is  the  power  of  the 


18  THE  PURPOSE  AND   USE  OF  COMFORT. 

bravest  martyrdom  and  the  hardest  work  that  the  world 
has  ever  seen. 

And  again,  it  would  make  our  spiritual  lives  and  ex- 
periences more  recognizable  and  certain  things.  Not  by 
toere  moods,  not  by  how  I  feel  to-day  or  how  I  felt  yes 
berday,  may  I  know  whether  I  am  indeed  living  the  life  of 
God,  but  only  by  knowing  that  God  is  usmg  me  to  help 
others.  No  mood  is  so  bright  that  it  can  do  without  that 
warrant.  No  mood  is  so  dark  that,  if  it  has  that,  it  need 
despair.  It  is  good  for  us  to  think  no  grace  or  blessing 
truly  ours  till  we  are  aware  that  God  has  blessed  some 
one  else  with  it  through  us. 

I  have  not  painted  an  ideal  and  impossible  picture  to 
you  to-day,  my  friends.  This  truth  and  all  the  motives 
that  flow  from  it  may  really  fill  your  life.  They  filled 
the  life  of  Christ.  Come  near  to  Him  ;  be  like  Him,  and 
they  shall  fill  yours.  So  your  Gethsemane  and  the  an- 
gels that  come  to  you  after  it  may  be  precious  to  you 
as  His  were  to  Him,  not  only  for  the  peace  which  they 
brought  Him,  but  because  they  were  to  be  the  fountain  of 
strength  and  hope  to  countless  souls  forever.  May  God 
grant  us  something  of  the  privilege  of  Christ,  which  waa 
to  live  a  manly  life  for  God's  sake,  and  also  to  live  a 
godly  life  for  men's  sake  ;  for  it  was  thus  that  He  was  9 
mediator  between  God  and  man. 


n. 

THE  WITHHELD  COMPLETIONS  OF  LIFE. 

"  Peter  said  unto  Him,  Lord,  w  xj  cannot  I  follow  Thee  now  V  —  Joml 
riii.  37. 

It  is  from  passages  like  this  that  we  have  all  gathered 
our  impression  of  St.  Peter's  character,  an  impression 
probably  clearer  and  more  correct  than  we  have  with 
regard  to  any  other  of  the  Lord's  disciples.  Here  is  all 
his  impulsiveness  and  affection,  the  unreasonableness  and 
impatience  which  still  excite  our  admiration  and  our 
love  because  they  strike  the  note  of  a  deeper  and  di- 
viner reason,  of  which  the  prudent  people  seldom  come 
in  sight.  They  were  sitting  together  at  the  Last  Sup- 
per. Jesus  had  just  told  his  friends  that  He  must  leave 
them.  Simon  Peter  was  the  first  to  leap  forward  with 
the  question,  "  Lord,  whither  goest  Thou  ?  "  Jesus  re- 
plied, "  Whither  I  go  thou  canst  not  follow  me  now,  but 
thou  shalt  follow  me  afterwards."  There  was  the  promise 
of  a  future  companionship  between  the  disciple  and  the 
Master,  which  was  to  carry  on  and  complete  the  compan* 
ionship  of  the  past,  whose  preciousness  was  now  coming 
out  as  it  drew  near  its  close.  There  opened  before  the 
loving  man  a  mysterious  but  beautiful  prospect  of  pome 
more  perfect  paths  through  which  he  might  walk  with 
Jesus,  and  find  the  completion  of  that  intercourse  of  which 
the  weU-remembered  walks  through  the  streets  of  JeruBA' 


20  THE   WITHHELD. COMPlItIONS   OF   LIFE. 

lem  and  the  lanes  of  Galilee  had  been  only  the  promise 
The  keen  joy  of  dying  with  his  Lord  seemed  all  that  wab 
needed  to  finish  the  joy  of  living  with  Him  ;  and  when  he 
sees  all  this  deferred,  when  Christ  is,  as  it  seems,  gather- 
ing np  His  robes  to  walk  alone  into  the  experience  that 
lies  before  Him,  Pet^r  breaks  out  in  a  cry  of  impatience, 
"  Why  cannot  I  follow  Thee  7iow  ?  "  The  life  with  Jesus, 
which  is  the  only  life  for  him,  seems  to  be  passing  hope- 
lessly away.  The  promise  of  a  future  day  when  it  shall 
be  restored  to  him  does:'not  satisfy  him  ;  indeed  it  hardly 
seems  to  take  hold  of  him  at  all.  He  wants  it  now.  It 
was  unreasonable.  So  it  is  unreasonable  when  by  the  side 
of  your  friend's  grave  you  wish  that  you  could  die  and 
enter  at  once  upon  the  everlasting  companionship.  So  it 
is  unreasonable  wh^n,  as  your  friend  goes  alone  into  a 
cloud  of  sorrow,  the  sunlight  of  prosperity  in  which  you 
are  left  standing  seems  hateful  to  you,  and  you  grudge 
him  his  solitary  pain.  How  unreasonable  Peter  was  ap- 
peared only  a  few  hours  later,  when  his  denial  proved 
his  unfitness  to  go  with  Jesus  into  the  mystery  and  pain 
which  He  was  entering.  It  is  an  unreasonable  impa- 
tience, but  it  is  one  that  makes  us  love  and  honor  the 
unreasonable  man,  and  adds  a  new  pleasure  to  the  study 
of  all  Peter's  after-life,  as  we  watch  him  treading  more 
and  mDre  in  his  Lord's  footsteps,  and  at  last  really  fol- 
lowing his  Lord  into  His  glory. 

It  has  seemed  to  me  as  if  this  verse  opened  a  great 
subject,  one  which  is  continually  pressing  upon  us,  one 
that  is  full  of  practical  bewilderments ;  a  subject  that 
must  come  home  to  the  thoughts  of  many  of  the  people 
in  this  congregation.  That  subject  is.  The  Withheld 
Completions  of  Life.    St.  Peter  felt  dimly  that  the  life  of 


THE  WITHHELD   COMPLETIONS   OF   LIFE.  21 

Jesus  was  opening  into  something  so  large  that  all  which 
had  gone  before  would  be  seen  to  have  been  only  the  ves- 
tibule and  preparation  for  what  was  yet  to  come.  He 
vaguely  felt  that  this  death,  in  whose  shadow  they  were 
sitting,  was  the  focus  into  which  all  the  lines  along  which 
they  had  travelled  were  converging  only  that  they  might 
>pen  into  larger  and  more  wonderful  fields  of  experience, 
.\nd  just  then,  when  his  expectation  was  keenest,  when 
his  love  was  most  eager,  an  iron  curtain  fell  across  his 
view.  "  Whither  I  go  thou  canst  no^  follow  me  now," 
said  Jesus.  The  completion  was  withheld.  The  life  of 
Jesus  was  broken  off,  and  they  who  had  lived  with  Him 
were  left  standing  bewildered  and  distressed  in  front  of 
ihe  mystery  which  hid  Him  from  their  sight. 

And  that  is  what  is  always  happening  ;  what  it  is  so 
hard  for  us  to  understand  and  yet  what  we  must  under- 
stand, or  life  is  all  a  puzzle.  For  all  our  life  has  its  ten- 
dencies. It  would  be  intolerable  to  us  if  we  could  not 
trace  tendencies  in  our  life.  If  everything  stood  still,  or 
if  things  only  moved  round  in  a  circle,  it  would  be  a 
dreary  and  a  dreadful  thing  to  live.  But  we  rejoice  in 
life  because  it  seems  to  be  carrying  us  somewhere ;  be- 
cause its  darkness  seems  to  be  rolling  on  towards  light, 
and  even  its  pain  to  be  moving  onward  to  a  hidden  joy. 
We  bear  with  incompleteness,  because  of  the  completion 
which  is  prophesied  and  hoped  for.  But  it  is  the  delay 
of  that  completion,  the  way  in  which,  when  we  seem  to 
be  all  ready  for  it,  it  does  not  come  ^  the  way  in  which, 
when  we  seem  to  be  just  on  the  brink  of  it,  the  iron  cur- 
tain drops  across  our  path  ;  this  is  what  puzzles  and  dis- 
tresses us.  The  tendency  that  is  not  allowed  to  reach  the 
fulfiDment  which  alone  gave  it  value  seems  a  mockery. 


22        THE  WITHHELD  COMPLETIONS  OF  UFE. 

Yoa  watch  your  plant  growing,  and  see  its  wonderful 
building  of  the  woody  fibre,  its  twining  of  the  strong 
roots,  its  busy  life-blood  hurrying  along  its  veins.  The 
dignity  and  beauty  of  the  T^iole  process  is  in  the  com- 
pletion which  it  all  expects.  Some  morning  you  step  into 
your  garden  and  the  deep-red  flower  is  blazing  full-blown 
on  the  stem,  and  all  is  plain.  The  completion  has  justi- 
fied the  process.  But  suppose  the  plant  to  have  been  all 
the  time  conscious  of  the  coming  flower,  to  have  felt  ita 
fire  already  in  the  tumultuous  sap,  and  yet  to  have  felt  it- 
self held  back  from  blossoming.  Not  to-day  I  not  to-day  : 
each  morning  as  it  tried  to  crown  itself  with  the  glory 
toward  which  all  its  tendencies  had  struggled.  Would 
it  not  be  a  very  puzzled  and  impatient  and  unhappy 
little  plant,  as  it  stood  wondering  why  its  completion  waa 
withheld,  and  what  delayed  its  flower  ? 

Now  there  are  certain  conditions  which  are  to  all  good 
life  just  what  the  flower  is  to  the  plant.  They  furnish 
it  its  natural  completion.  They  crown  its  struggles  with 
a  manifest  success.  There  are  certain  fine  results  of  feel- 
ing and  contentment  which  are  the  true  and  recognized 
results  of  the  best  ways  of  living.  They  crown  the  hid- 
den resolutions  and  the  prosaic  struggles  of  men  with 
beautiful  conclusiveness,  as  the  gorgeous  flower  finishes 
all  that  the  buried  root  and  the  rugged  stalk  of  the  plant 
have  done,  and  make  it  a  perfect  and  satisfactory  thing. 
The  flower  is  the  plant's  success.  These  conditions  ol 
peace  and  pleasure  are  the  life's  success  in  the  same  way. 
But  when  the  life,  conscious  of  the  character  in  itself  out 
of  which  these  conditions  ought  to  come,  finds  that  they 
do  not  come,  finds  that  it  pauses  on  the  brink  of  its  com- 
pletion and  cannot  blossom,  then  comes  bewilderment 


THE  WITHHELD  COMPLETIONS   OF   LIF£.  23 

cheu  come  impatient  questionings  and  doubts.  This  \a 
the  state  of  many  lives,  I  think,  especially  about  relig- 
ious things.  I  want  to  speak  with  you  of  this,  and  see 
if  we  can  get  any  light  upon  it. 

But  lest  I  speak  too  vaguely,  let  me  take  special  in- 
stances. In  that  way  we  can  understand  it  best,  and 
heie  is  the  first,  perhaps  the  simplest.  Suppose  we  have 
a  man  thoroughly,  genuinely,  unselfishly  devoted  to  the 
good  of  fellow-men.  It  is  not  so  uncommon  as  we  think. 
It  matters  not  upon  what  scale  the  self-devotion  may 
take  place.  A  poor  obscure  woman  in  a  sick-room  giv- 
ing her  days  and  nights,  her  health  and  strength,  to  some 
poor  invalid  ;  or  a  great  brilliant  man  out  in  the  world 
neglecting  his  personal  interests  in  the  desire  that  some 
of  the  lagging  causes  of  God  may  be  helped  forward,  or 
that  the  men  of  the  city  may  be  better  clothed  and  {ed 
and  housed.  Now  such  a  life,  in  whatever  scale  it  may 
be  lived,  has  its  legitimate  completion.  There  is  one 
natural  and  healthy  result  to  which  it  is  all  tending, 
one  flower  into  whose  beauty  its  hard  work  was  made  to 
bloom.  The  natural  flower  which  should  crown  that  life 
of  self-devotion  is  men's  gratitude.  The  joyous,  thank- 
ful recognition  of  your  fellow-men  is  the  true  issue  of 
the  life  which  gives  itself  for  them.  Perhaps  in  ringing 
cheers  that  make  the  world  stand  still  to  listen,  perhaps 
only  in  the  weak,  silent  pressure  of  the  hand,  or  the  last 
feeble  lighting  of  the  eyes,  with  which  he  whose  sick-bed 
you  have  watched  thanks  you  unutterably  just  as  he 
dies ;  some  way  or  other,  thanks  is  the  completion  of  ser- 
vice. The  two  belong  together,  service  and  thanks  ;  not 
in  the  way  of  bargain,  not  by  deliberate  arrangement, 
but  in  the  very  nature  of  the  things.    The  ruan  who  does 


24  THE   WITHHELD   COMPLETIONS  OF  LIFE. 

no  good  expects  no  thanks.  The  selfish  life  feels  and 
shows  the  unnaturalness  if  men  make  a  mistake  and  lav- 
ish their  gratitude  upon  it.  It  is  as  if  men  tied  the  glo- 
rious flower  on  to  the  top  of  a  wooden  post  that  has  no 
germinating  power.  But  to  the  life  that  serves,  the  grat- 
itude that  recognizes  service  belongs  as  the  warmth  be- 
longs to  the  sunlight,  or  the  echo  to  the  sound.  And 
now  suppose  that  the  gratitude  does  not  come.  Your 
friend  turns  his  face  to  the  wall  and  dies,  and  never  looks 
at  you.  The  people  pass  you  by,  and  waste  their  cheers 
upon  some  charlatan  who  has  been  working  for  himself. 
What  then  ?  Is  there  no  disappointment  of  the  soul ;  no 
sense  of  a  withheld  completion  ;  no  consciousness  of  some- 
thing wrong,  of  something  that  falls  short  of  the  com- 
plete and  rounded  issue  which  was  natural  ?  Indeed 
there  is !  "  What  does  it  mean  ?  "  you  ask  with  wonder, 
even  with  impatience. 

And  in  answer  to  your  wondering  question  there  are 
two  things  to  be  said.  The  first  is  this :  that  such  a 
suspension  of  the  legitimate  result,  this  failure  of  the 
flower  to  complete  the  plant,  does  show  beyond  all  doubt 
a  real  condition  of  disorder.  The  natural  result  of  your 
self-devotion  has  not  come  because  the  state  of  things  in 
which  you  live  is  unnatural.  That  must  be  recognized. 
There  is  a  reason  in  your  wonder  and  surprise.  Some- 
thing is  wrong.  If  you  let  your  surprise  appear,  if  men 
can  see,  as  they  look  into  your  face,  pain  and  bewilder- 
ment at  their  ingratitude,  no  doubt  they  will  misunder- 
stand you.  They  will  laugh  and  jeer.  They  will  cry, 
"*  Oh,  after  all,  then,  you  were  not  unselfish ;  you  did  this 
thing  not  for  us,  but  to  be  seen  of  men  and  to  be  thanked. 
It  is  good  enough  for  you  not  to  get  it  if  that  was  what 


THE  WITHHELD   COMPLETIONS   OF   LIFE.  2,'> 

fxta  wanted."  But  it  may  very  well  be  that  they  are 
wrcng  ;  you  were  unselfish  ;  you  did  not  work  for  thanks. 
When  the  thanks  do  not  come  it  is  not  your  loss,  it  is 
the  deranged,  disordered  state  of  things  which  the  world 
ahows  that  troubles  you.  When  Jesus  wept  ever  un- 
grateful Jerusalem,  did  He  not  feel  its  ingratitude  ?  But 
waa  it  not  the  disturbed  world  where  such  ingratitude 
was  possible,  and  not  any  mere  loss  of  recognition  of 
Himself,  which  lay  at  the  bottom  of  his  grief  ?  When 
jour  child  is  ungrateful  to  you,  is  it  the  neglect  of  your- 
self, or  is  it  not  the  deranged  family,  the  broken  and 
demoralized  home,  that  saddens  you?  It  is  the  violation 
of  a  deep,  true  instinct.  I  think  that  this  is  always  on 
Christ's  soul.  The  world's  ingratitude  to  Him  showed 
Him  how  wrong  the  world  was.  In  a  perfect  world 
eveiy  tendency  must  open  to  its  result.  Its  Christ  must 
be  greeted  with  hosannas.  They  who  receive  His  bless- 
ings must  give  Him  their  praise.  The  world  is  broken 
and  disordered,  that  is  the  first  thing  that  is  meant  when 
you  help  men  and  they  scorn  you,  when  the  world's  ben- 
efactors are  neglected  or  despised. 

But  let  us  never  think  that  we  have  reached  all  the 
meaning  when  we  have  reached  that.  Because  any  state 
of  things  is  unnatural,  it  does  not  prove  that  there  caji 
come  out  of  it  no  blessing.  God  very  often  leaves  the 
consequences  of  a  man's  sins  untouched,  but  in  the  midst  of 
them  makes  it  possible  for  His  servant  to  live  all  the 
h-etter  life  by  the  very  derangements  and  distortions  by 
which  he  is  surrounded.  So  it  is  here.  The  service  that 
a  man  does  to  his  fellow-men  does  not  bring  down  their 
gratitude  upon  him.  And  what  thf^"  "^  There  is  a  bless- 
ing which  may  come  to  him  even  out  of  the  withhold- 


26  THE   WITHHELD   COMPLETIONS   OF   LIFE. 

ing  of  the  legitimate  completion  of  his  service.  It  maj 
throw  him  back  upon  the  nature  of  the  act  itself,  and 
compel  him  to  find  his  satisfaction  there.  Many  a  man 
who,  having  served  his  brethren  in  public  or  in  private, 
has  looked  up  from  his  work  with  a  true  human  longing 
that  his  work  should  be  recognized,  and  heard  no  sound 
of  gratitude,  has  then  retreated  to  the  self-sacrifice  itself 
and  found,  in  the  mere  doing  of  that,  an  even  deeper, 
even  keener  joy  than  he  could  have  gathered  from  the 
most  spontaneous  and  hearty  thanks.  That  has  been 
the  support,  the  inner  triumph  of  many  a  despised  re- 
former and  misunderstood  friend.  Men  have  found  a  joy 
which  they  could  not  have  had  in  a  world  undisturbed, 
and  whose  moral  order  was  perfect.  The  essence  of  any 
act  is  more  and  finer  than  its  consequences  are.  It  is 
better  to  live  in  the  essence  of  an  act  than  in  its  conse- 
quences or  rewards.  The  consequences  of  an  act  are 
meant  to  interpret  and  manifest  its  essence ;  but  if  at 
any  time  the  withholding  of  its  consequence  can  drive  ua 
home  more  deep  into  its  essence,  is  it  not  a  blessing  ? 

I  think  we  cannot  doubt  that  Christ's  life  manifested 
the  essential  and  eternal  joy  of  serving  God,  the  dignity 
and  beauty  of  helping  man,  as  it  could  not  have  done  if  it 
had  been  heralded  by  the  trumpets  and  followed  by  the 
cheers  of  human  gratitude.  Because  He  was  "  despised 
and  rejected  of  men,"  we  are  able  to  see  more  clearly 
how  truly  He  was  His  Father's  "  well-beloved  Son."  And 
if,  as  it  may  be,  you,  with  no  morbidness,  no  self-conceit, 
no  querulousness,  know  that  you  have  been  helping  some 
man,  or  some  hundred  men,  from  whom  you  get  no  grati- 
tude, —  the  manly  thing  for  you  to  do  in  that  withhold- 
ing of  the  natural  completion  of  your  life  is  just  what 


THE  WltHHELD   COMPLETIONS   OF  UFK.  27 

Christ  did  :  first  own  that  the  world  is  out  of  order,  and 
do  not  look  with  any  certain  confidence  for  a  recognition 
which  could  be  certain  only  in  a  world  of  moral  perfect- 
ness  ;  and  then  let  its  withholding  drive  you  home  to  the 
blesseilness  of  the  service  of  other  men  in  and  for  itself, 
recognized  or  unrecognized,  thanked  or  unthanked,  and 
to  companionship  with  God,  who  understands  it  all. 

As  we  come  into  the  regions  of  more  truly  spiritual 
experience  this  truth  of  the  withheld  completions  of  life 
becomes  more  striking,  and  often  much  more  puzzling. 
As  we  come  to  that  history  which  goes  on  within  a  man's 
own  heart,  and  where  the  action  of  other  men  does  not 
intrude,  it  seems  more  strange  that  each  cause  cannot 
produce  its  full  effect,  and  each  growth  blossom  to  its 
appointed  flower.  But  even  here  I  think  that  if  we  keep 
in  mind  the  two  considerations  which  I  have  been  speak- 
ing of  we  shall  find  in  them,  if  not  the  sufficient  explana- 
tions, at  least  the  supporting  consolations  of  the  withheld 
completions  of  our  life.  Look,  for  instance,  at  the  con- 
nection of  duty  and  happiness.  Happiness  is  the  natural 
flower  of  duty.  The  good  man  ought  to  be  a  thoroughly 
bright  and  joyous  man.  This  is  no  theoretical  convic- 
tion. It  is  the  first  quick  instinct  of  the  human  heart. 
We  do  not  know,  I  think,  how  deep  in  us  lies  this  assur- 
ance that  goodness  and  happiness  belong  together,  how 
impossible  it  would  be  to  take  it  out  of  us  without  de- 
ranging all  our  life.  Just  think,  if  there  were  no  such 
assurance,  what  a  dreadful  thing  happiness  would  be  in 
the  world.  If  to  be  happy  meant  nothing,  or  meant 
badness,  if  it  had  no  connection  with  being  good,  how  a 
laugh  in  the  street  would  be  dreadful  to  us,  and  the  look 
of  a  bright,  gay,  happy  face  would  strike  upon  our  con- 


28  THE   WITHHELD   COMPLETIONS   OF  LIFE. 

Bcience  like  a  cloud  that  sweeps  across  the  sun.  But  no . 
l^rom  the  innocence  of  childhood  uttering  itself  in  the 
child's  sunny  joy,  on  through  the  whole  of  life,  there  runa 
one  cjonstant  conviction  that  goodness  and  happiness  be- 
long together.  That  conviction  meets  a  thousand  con- 
tradictions, but  it  is  too  strong  for  them  all.  It  runa 
like  a  mountain  stream  along  a  course  all  blocked  with 
rocks  of  difficulty ;  but  none  of  them  can  permanently 
hinder  it  or  turn  it  back.  It  slips  under  or  around  them 
all,  this  deep  and  live  conviction  that  the  tendency  of 
goodness  is  to  happiness.  In  this  conviction  lies  the 
poetry  of  human  life.  This  conviction  has  planted  the 
Edens  which  all  races  have  discerned  behind  them,  and 
painted  the  Heavens  which  they  have  all  seen  before 
them.  It  is  bound  up  with  all  belief  in  God.  To  cease 
to  believe  it  would  be  to  bow  down  at  the  footstool  of 
a  devil  or  a  chance,  and  which  of  these  would  be  the 
most  terrible  master  who  can  say  ?  With  this  convic- 
tion strong  in  us  we  come  to  some  man's  life,  —  a  life 
ivhich  we  are  sure  is  good ;  to  call  it  wicked  is  to  con- 
fuse all  our  idea  of  wickedness  and  goodness.  And  that 
life  is  all  gloomy.  Duty  is  done  day  after  day,  but  done 
in  utter  dreariness ;  there  is  no  smile  upon  the  face,  no 
ring  of  laughter  in  the  voice ;  a  good  man,  a  just  and 
pure  man,  a  man  who  hates  sin  and  whom  you  would  not 
dare  to  think  of  tempting,  and  yet  a  sad  man,  ii'^t  a  glad 
man ;  a  man  to  whom  life  is  a  burden,  not  an  exhilara- 
tion and  a  joy.  Such  men  there  are ;  good  without 
gladness,  shocking  and  perplexing  our  deep  certainty  thai 
to  be  good  and  to  be  glad  belong  together.  To  them 
we  want  to  bring  the  two  considerations  which  I  dwelt 
on  when  1  was  speaking  of  self-sacrifice  and  gratitude 


THE  WITHHELD    COMPLETIONS   OF   LIFE.  *A 

Co  recognize  that  it  is  unnatural,  and  so  to  struggle 
against  it,  not  to  yield  to  it,  and  yet,  while  it  must  last, 
to  get  what  blessing  we  can  out  of  it,  by  letting  it  drive 
us  down  deeper  for  our  joy  and  comfort,  into  the  very 
act  and  fact  of  doing  righteousness,  that  is  all  that  we 
can  do,  and  that  is  enough  to  do  when  the  golden  link 
is  broken  and  doing  righteousness  does  not  blossom  into 
being  happy.  "  I  am  trying  to  do  right,"  a  man  says, 
"  and  yet  the  world  is  all  dark  to  me ;  what  can  you 
say  to  me  ?  Will  you  tell  me  still  that  there  is  a  nat- 
ural connection  between  doing  right  and  being  happy  ?  " 
Surely  I  will,  I  answer.  I  will  insist  on  your  remember- 
ing it.  I  will  warn  you  never  to  forget  it,  nor  to  get  to 
counting  gloominess  the  natural  air  and  atmosphere  of 
duty.  I  will  beg  you  never  to  think  it  right,  that  when 
you  are  trying  to  be  good  you  should  still  be  unhappy. 
You  must  struggle  against  it.  And  yet,  you  must  let  the 
very  fact  that  the  connection  can  be  broken  prove  to  you 
that  while  the  union  of  duty  and  joy  is  natural  it  is  not 
essential  and  unbreakable.  The  plant  ought  to  come  to 
flower,  but  if  the  plant  fails  of  its  flower  it  is  still  a  plant. 
The  duty  should  open  into  joy,  bat  it  may  fail  of  joy  and 
still  be  duty.  If  the  joy  is  not  there,  still  hold  the  duty, 
and  be  sure  that  you  have  the  real  thing  while  you  are 
holding  that.  Be  all  the  more  dutiful,  though  it  be  in 
the  dark.  Do  righteousness  and  forget  happiness,  and  so 
it  is  most  likely  that  happiness  will  come.  This  is  aU 
that  one  can  say,  and  this  is  enough  to  say.  It  will  help 
the  man  neither  despondently  to  submit  to  nor  franti- 
cally to  rebel  against  the  unnatural  postponement  of  the 
happiness  which  belongs  to  his  struggle  to  do  right.  It 
will  help  him  to  be  hopeful  without  impatieuce,  and 
•>i*tient  without  despair. 


80  THE   WITHHELD   COMPLETIONS  OF  LIFE. 

But  take  another  case,  that  comes  still  more  dis* 
tinotly  within  the  limits  of  Chi'istian  experience.  There 
are  promises  in  the  Bible,  many  of  them,  which  declare 
that  dedication  to  God  shall  bring  communion  with  God. 
**  Draw  near  to  me  and  I  will  draw  near  to  you,"  sayiS 
God.  And  even  without  the  special  promise,  that  whole 
revelation  of  God  which  the  Bible  gives  us  involves  such 
a  necessity.  It  cannot  be  that  a  God  all  love  surrounds 
us  with  His  life,  presses  upon  us,  waits  for  us  on  every 
side,  and  yet  the  meanest  soul  can  really  turn  to  Him  and 
throw  itself  open  before  Him,  and  not  receive  Him  into 
its  life.  And  yet  sometimes  the  man  does  give  himself 
to  God,  and  the  promise  seems  to  fail.  The  heart  draws 
near  to  God  in  conscious  dedication,  and  it  seems  as  if  no 
answering  communion  came.  The  soul  is  laid  upon  the 
altar,  and  no  hand  of  fire  is  seen  reached  out  from  heaven 
to  take  it  up  in  love.  Day  follows  day,  year  follows 
year,  it  may  be,  and  the  man  given  to  God  trembles 
when' he  hears  other  men  talk  of  the  joy  of  divine  com- 
munion, because  no  such  ever  comes  to  him.  Once  more, 
to  such  a  soul,  to  any  such  soul  which  is  here  to-day, 
there  are  the  same  two  messages  to  bring.  Never,  no 
matter  how  long  such  exclusion  from  the  presence  of  God 
may  seem  to  last,  though  it  go  on  year  after  year  and 
you  are  growing  old  in  your  seeming  orphanhood  ;  never 
accept  it,  never  make  up  your  mind  to  it  that  it  is  right ; 
never  cease  to  expect  that  the  doors  will  fly  open  and 
you  will  be  admitted  to  all  the  joy  of  your  Father's  felt 
love  and  of  unhindered  communion  with  Him.  Never 
lose  out  of  your  soul's  sight  the  seat  which  is  set  for  you 
in  the  very  sanctuary  of  divine  love.  And  what  beside  ? 
Seek  even  more  deeply  the  satisfaction  which  is  in  your 


THE   WITHHELD   COMPLETIONS   OF   LIFE.  31 

consecration  itself ;  and  that  you  may  find  it,  consecrate 
yourself  more  and  more  completely.  Oh,  it  may  well  be 
that  there  are  some  of  you  who  are  listening  intently  at 
this  moment,  thinking  perhaps  that  now,  after  a  thousand 
disappointments  in  a  thousand  sermons,  you  may  hear 
the  word  you  need,  which  shall  explain  this  terrible  sep- 
aration from  your  Father,  which,  while  you  give  your- 
selves with  all  your  souls  to  Him,  still  keeps  you  shut 
out  from  His  communion.  I  cannot  tell  you  all  you 
want  to  know.  Nobody  can.  But  there  are  two  great 
anxieties  which  I  do  feel  for  such  a  soul  as  yours.  One 
is,  lest  you  should  give  up  hoping  for  and  expecting  that 
privilege  of  communion  which,  however  long  it  be  de- 
layed, because  you  are  a  child  of  God  is  certainly  yours 
iu  possibility,  and  must  certainly  be  yours  some  day  in 
possession.  The  other  is,  lest,  since  the  consecration  has 
not  brought  you  the  communion,  you  should  think  that 
the  consecration  is  unreal,  and  so  lose  the  power  to  be 
blessed  by  it,  and  the  impulse  to  increase  it.  Christ  has 
led  you  with  Him  thus  far  up  to  the  line  where  you  have 
given  yourself  to  Him.  Before  you, open  the  fields  where 
you  see  the  privilege  of  having  His  fulness  given  to  you. 
But  something  seems  to  come  across  and  shut  you  out 
from  them.  No  wonder  that  you  lift  up  a  cry  almost  of 
bitterness  :  "  Why  cannot  I  follow  thee  now?  Why  this 
delay  of  the  divinest  life  ?  Why  so  much  duty  with  so 
little  strength  ?  Why  only  the  journey  and  the  hunge* 
And  the  thirst,  without  the  brook  of  refreshment  by  the 
way  ?  "  No  man  can  wholly  answer  these  questions,  but 
multitudes  of  saints,  if  they  could  speak,  would  tell  you 
how  in  their  hindered  lives  God  kept  them  true  to  such 
experience  as  they  had  attained  ;  and  so  it  was  that,  by 


82  THE  WITHHELD   COMPLETIONS  OF  LIFE. 

and  by,  either  before  or  after  the  great  enlightenment  of 
death,  the  hindrance  melted  away,  and  they  who  had 
been  crying  for  years,  "  Lord,  why  cannot  we  follow  Thee 
now  '^ "  passed  forth  into  the  multitude  of  those  who 
"  follow  the  Lamb  whithersoever  He  goeth." 

There  is  one  other  of  the  withheld  completions  of  life 
of  which  I  should  like  to  speak,  and  only  one.  Among 
Chiist's  promises  there  is  none  that  is  dearer  to  one  class 
of  minds,  minds  of  a  very  pure  and  noble  character,  than 
that  which  He  spoke  one  day  when  He  was  in  discussion 
with  the  Jews  in  the  Temple.  "  If  any  man  wills  to 
do  my  will,"  He  said,  "  he  shall  know  of  the  doctrine, 
whether  it  be  of  God  or  whether  I  speak  of  myself."  I 
have  been  struck  by  seeing  how  favorite  a  text  that  has 
become  in  our  day.  Many  minds  have  rested  upon  it. 
Many  earnest  seekers  after  truth,  bewildered  by  the  diffi- 
culties of  doctrine,  almost  ready  to  give  up  in  despair 
have  welcomed  this  declaration  of  the  Lord,  and  gone  out 
with  new  hope,  that  by  the  dedication  of  their  wills,  by 
trying  to  become  obedient  to  Christ,  they  should  come  to 
understand  the  Christ  who  was  so  dark  to  them.  Many 
and  many  a  soul  has  found  that  that  was  indeed  the  mes- 
sage that  it  needed.  Turning  away  from  vain  disputes  of 
words,  leaving  theological  subtleties  alone,  just  trying  to 
turn  what  it  knew  of  Christ  into  a  life,  it  has  found  — 
what  He  promised  —  that  it  has  become  assured  of  His 
divinity,  sure  that  His  doctrine  was  of  God.  Such  souls 
have  not  found  that  the  thousand  curious  questions  of 
theology  were  answered,  and  all  the  mystery  rolled  away 
out  of  the  sky  of  truth.  Christ  did  not  promise  that. 
But  they  have  found  what  He  did  promise  :  that  coming 
nc«r  to  Him  in  obedience,  they  have  be«m  madp  sure  of 


THE    WITHHELD   COMPLETIONS   OF   LIFE.  3b 

the  true  divinity  that  was  in  Him  and  in  the  teachings 
that  He  gave.  Such  testimony  comes  abundantly  from 
all  the  ages,  and  from  many  souls  to-day.  It  is  not 
strange.  It  is  like  all  Chi-ist's  teachings,  —  one  utterance 
of  an  essential  universal  truth.  Everywhere  the  flower  of 
obedience  is  intelligence.  Obey  a  man  with  cordial  loy- 
alty and  you  will  understand  him.  Obey  Jesus  with  cor 
dial  loyalty  and  you  will  understand  Jesus.  Not  by 
studying  Him,  but  by  doing  His  will,  shall  you  learn 
bow  divin*^  He  is.  Obedience  completes  itself  in  under- 
standing. 

And  now  are  there  any  of  us  from  whom  that  comple- 
tion seems  to  have  been  withheld  ?  Are  there  any  of  us 
who,  trying  hard  to  do  the  Lord's  will  wherever  He  has 
made  it  known  to  them,  looking  for  it  continually,  are  yet 
distressed  to  know  that  their  Lord's  nature  has  not  be- 
come all  clear  to  them  ?  They  must  be  sure,  first,  that 
they  are  right ;  sure  that  Christ  has  not  done  for  them 
what  He  promised,  though  He  may  not  have  done  what 
they  chose  to  expect.  They  must  be  sure  that  they  have 
not  really  come  to  an  essential  faith  that  the  doctrine  of 
Jesus  is  divine.  To  many  souls  that  faith  has  come,  while, 
bewildered  still  by  various  forms  of  expression,  they  can- 
not even  recognize  their  own  belief.  They  must  be  sure 
again  that  their  will  to  serve  Christ  has  been  indeed  true  ; 
not  simply  the  trying  of  an  experiment  from  which  they 
still  reserved  the  liberty  to  withdraw,  but  the  unreserved 
and  total  dedication  of  themselves  to  Him.  And  what 
then  ?  Sure  of  all  this,  still  the  darkness  and  the  doubts 
remain.  Then  they  must  come,  it  seems  to  me,  to  the  two 
principles  which  I  have  enforced  this  morning.  Then 
they  must  say  to  themselves  :    "  This  is  unnatural ;  it 


84  THE  WITHHELD   COMPLETIONS  OF   LIFE. 

oughc  not  to  be.  My  service,  my  true  will-dedication 
ought  to  bring  me  out  into  the  light  ;  at  least  I  will  re- 
member that.  I  will  not  be  content  with  darkness.  I 
will  not  let  despair  of  positive  belief  settle  down  on  me 
with  its  chilling  power.  I  will  not  rest  until  my  service 
of  Christ  completes  itself  in  the  knowledge  of  Christ ;  and 
yet  all  the  time  while  I  am  waiting  I  will  find  joy  iu 
the  service  of  Him,  however  dimly  I  may  apprehend  Him. 
I  will  find  deeper  and  deeper  satisfaction  in  doing  His 
will,  though  it  be  in  the  midst  of  many  doubts,  though 
I  be  sorely  puzzled  when  men  ask  me  to  give  my  account 
of  Him.  It  may  be  that  just  because  obedience  is  not 
able  at  once  to  complete  itself  in  knowledge,  the  pure 
joy  and  deep  culture  which  are  in  obedience  itself  may 
come  to  me  more  really  and  more  richly."  That  ia 
no  barren  lesson,  my  dear  friends,  to  come  to  any  man. 
Yon  would  not  find  it  a  barren  lesson  if  it  could  come  to 
you  to-day.  If  to  your  life,  struggling  in  obedience  to 
Christ,  but  not  able  to  clear  itself  into  light  about  Christ, 
there  could  come,  as  from  the  Christ  you  long  for,  a  com- 
mand to  you  to  struggle  on  still  in  hope  because  you 
must  reach  the  light  some  day ;  and  yet  a  command, 
while  the  light  is  withheld,  to  find  satisfaction  and  growth 
in  the  ever-deepening  struggle,  would  not  that  be  the  com- 
mand you  need  ?  Oh  that  in  His  name  I  could  utter  thia 
message  to  any  souls  who  are  thus  trying  to  do  His  will, 
and  yet  seeming  not  to  know  His  doctrine  I  Oh  that  I 
Dould  bid  them  with  His  voice  to  persevere  because  there 
is  light  ahead,  and  yet  to  be  thankful  even  now  for  the 
culture  of  the  darkness  I  "  Whither  I  go  thou  canst  not 
follow  me  now,  but  thou  shalt  follow  me  afterwards." 
"  Watch,  therefore  ! ' 


THE  WITHHELD  COMPLETIONS  OF   LIFE.  3& 

I  hope,  then,  that  I  have  made  clear  this  story  of  the 
witliheld  completions  of  our  human  life.  The  plant  growa 
on  toward  its  appointed  flower,  but  before  the  blossom 
comes  some  hand  is  laid  upon  it,  and  the  day  of  its  blos- 
soming is  delayed.  I  have  dwelt  on  a  few  illustrations, 
but  the  truth  is  everywhere.  The  emotional  and  affeo 
tional  conditions  are  the  natural  flower  of  the  wills  an<Z 
dedications  of  our  life.  But  we  resolve,  we  dedicate  our- 
selves, and,  though  the  prophecy  and  hope  immediately 
begin  to  assert  themselves  all  through  us,  the  joy,  the 
peace,  the  calmness  of  assurance,  does  not  come.  We  are 
like  southern  plants,  taken  up  to  a  northern  climate  and 
planted  in  a  northern  soil.  They  grow  there,  but  they  are 
always  failing  of  their  flowers.  The  poor  exiled  shrub 
dreams  by  a  native  longing  of  a  splendid  blossom  which  it 
has  never  seen,  but  is  dimly  conscious  that  it  ought  some- 
how to  produce.  It  feels  the  flower  which  it  has  not 
strength  to  make  in  the  half  chilled  but  still  genuine 
juices  of  its  southern  nature.  That  is  the  way  in  which 
the  ideal  life,  the  life  of  full  completions,  haunts  us  all. 
Nothing  can  really  haunt  us  except  what  we  have  the  be- 
ginning of,  the  native  capacity  for,  however  hindered,  in 
ourselves.  The  highest  angel  does  not  tempt  us  because 
he  is  of  another  race  from  us ;  but  God  is  our  continual 
incitement  because  we  are  His  children.  So  the  ideal  life 
b  in  our  blood,  and  never  will  be  still.  We  feel  the 
thing  we  ought  to  be  beating  beneath  the  thing  we  are. 
Every  time  we  see  a  man  who  has  attained  our  human 
idea  a  little  more  fully  than  we  have,  it  wakens  our  lan- 
guid blood  and  fills  us  with  new  longings.  When  we  see 
Christ,  it  is  as  if  a  new  live  plant  out  of  the  southern  soU 
were  brought  suddenly  in  among  its  poor  stunted,  trar*- 


36  TF/K  -WITHHELD   COMPLETIONS   OF   LIFE 

planted  brethren,  and,  blossoming  in  their  sight,  inter 
preted  to  each  ot  them  the  restlessness  and  discontent 
which  was  in  each  of  their  poor  hearts.  When,  led  I  y 
Christ,  we  see  God,  it  is  as  if  the  stunted,  flowerless 
plants  grew  tall  enough  to  stand  up  and  look  across  all 
the  miles  that  lie  between,  and  see  the  glory  of  the  per 
feet  plant  as  it  blooms  in  unhindered  luxuriance  in  ite 
Bouthern  home.  And  when  we  die  and  go  to  God,  it  is  as 
if  at  last  the  poor  shrub  were  plucked  up  out  of  its  exile 
and  taken  back  and  set  where  it  belonged,  in  the  rich 
soil,  under  the  warm  sim,  where  the  patience  which  it  had 
learned  in  its  long  waiting  should  make  all  the  deeper  and 
richer  the  flower  into  which  its  experience  was  set  free  to 
find  its  utterance. 

Patience  and  struggle.  An  earnest  use  of  what  we 
have  now,  and,  all  the  time,  an  earnest  discontent  until 
we  come  to  what  we  ought  to  be.  Are  not  these  what 
we  need,  —  what  in  their  rich  union  we  could  not  get,  ex- 
cept in  just  such  a  life  as  this  with  its  delayed  comple- 
tions? Jesus  does  not  blame  Peter  when  he  impetuously 
begs  that  he  may  follow  Him  now.  He  bids  him  wait 
and  he  shall  follow  Him  some  day.  But  we  can  see  that 
the  value  of  his  waiting  lies  in  the  certainty  that  he  shall 
follow,  and  the  value  of  his  following,  when  it  comes,  will 
lie  in  the  fact  that  he  has  waited.  So,  if  we  take  all 
Christ's  culture,  we  are  sure  that  our  life  on  earth  may 
get  already  the  inspiration  of  the  heaven  for  which  we 
are  training,  and  our  life  in  heaven  may  keep  forever  th« 
blessing  of  ^■^'^  earth  in  which  we  were  trained. 


m. 

THE  CONQUEROR  FROM  EDOM. 

•  Who  is  this  that  cometh  from  Edom,  with  dyed  garment!  from  Bo* 
rahl"  —  Isaiah  Ixiii.  I. 

This  chapter  of  Isaiah  opens  in  a  strain  of  the  loftiest 
prophetic  poetry.  A  representative  of  Israel  stands  look- 
ing down  one  of  the  long  ravines  which  open  from  the 
central  mountain  region  of  the  country  toward  the  val- 
ley of  the  Jordan  and  the  Dead  Sea.  As  he  watches  he 
sees  a  stranger  approaching  him,  who  has  crossed  the  val- 
ley from  the  heights  beyond,  where  the  enemies  and  the 
heathen  live,  and  is  climbing  up  into  the  hills  of  Judea. 
It  is  an  heroic  figure.  The  stature  is  grand.  The  head 
is  proud  and  high.  The  steps  are  free  and  stately.  The 
garments  are  noble,  and  here  and  there  upon  them,  stain- 
ing and  illustrating  their  brightness,  are  the  marks  of 
blood.  The  Genius  of  Israel,  for  so  we  may  conceive  of 
the  first  speaker,  is  filled  with  amazement  and  challenges 
the  new-comer  with  this  ringing  question  :  "  Who  is  this 
that  cometh  from  Edom,  with  dyed  garments  from  Boz- 
rah  ?  This  that  is  glorious  in  his  apparel,  travelling  in 
the  greatness  of  his  strength?"  Then  comes  the  answer: 
''  I  that  speak  in  righteousness,  mighty  to  save."  As  he 
comes  nearer  the  mysterious  ind  awful  stains  upon  his 
clothing  become  more  clear,  and  the  Genius  questions  him 
again  :  '*  Whei*efore  art  thou  red  in  thine  apparel,  SLad 


88  THE  CONQUEEOR  FROM  EDOM. 

tliy  garments  like  him  that  treadeth  in  the  winefat  ?  " 
And  then  the  great  stranger  answers,  with  the  story  of 
a  struggle  and  a  victory :  "  I  have  trodden  the  wine- 
press alone,  and  of  the  people  there  was  none  with  me , 
for  I  will  tread  them  in  mine  anger  and  trample  them  in 
my  fury,  and  their  blood  shall  be  sprinkled  upon  my  gar 
ments,  and  I  will  stain  all  my  raiment.  For  the  day  of 
vengeance  is  in  mine  heart,  and  the  year  of  my  redeemed 
18  come.  And  I  looked,  and  there  was  none  to  help ;  and 
I  wondered  that  there  was  none  to  uphold :  therefore 
mine  own  arm  brought  salvation  unto  me,  and  my  fury  it 
upheld  me.  And  I  will  tread  down  the  people  in  mine 
anger  and  make  them  drunk  in  my  fury,  and  I  will  bring 
down  their  strength  to  the  earth." 

What  does  it  mean  !  —  the  prophetic  Genius  waiting, 
watching,  and  questioning  ;  the  mighty  stranger  com- 
ing fi-esh  from  victorious  battle,  with  the  robe  red  as  if 
with  the  stain  of  grapes,  coming  up  from  Edom,  with 
dyed  garments  from  Bozrah  ?  Edom,  remember,  was 
the  country  where  the  Israelites'  most  inveterate  enemies 
lived.  No  other  nation  pressed  on  them  so  constantly  or 
gave  them  such  continual  trouble  as  the  Edomites.  And 
Bozrah  was  the  capital  city  of  Edom,  the  centre  of  its 
pcwer.  When  the  conqueror  comes  from  Edom,  then, 
and  finds  Israel  anxious  and  eager  upon  the  mountain, 
and  shows  her  his  stained  robe  in  sign  of  the  struggle 
which  he  has  gone  through,  and  then  tells  her  that  the 
fictory  is  complete,  that  because  he  saw  that  she  had  no 
defender  he  has  undertaken  her  defence  and  trodden 
Edom  under  foot  for  her,  we  can  understand  something 
of  the  power  and  comfort  of  such  a  poetic  vision  to  the 
Hebrew's  heart.     There   may  have  been   some   special 


THE  CONQUEROR  FROM  EDOM.  39 

event  which  it  commemorated.  Some  special  danger  may 
have  threatened  on  the  side  of  the  tumultuous  Edom- 
ites,  and  some  special  unexpected  deliverer  may  have  ap- 
peared who  saved  the  country,  and  was  honored  by  this 
song  of  praise. 

But  every  such  special  deliverance  to  the  deep  relig- 
ious and  patriotic  feeling  of  the  Jew  had  a  much  wider 
meaning.  Eveiy  partial  mercy  to  his  nation  always 
pointed  to  the  one  great  mercy  which  was  to  embrace  all 
others,  to  the  coming  of  the  Messiah,  whose  advent  was 
to  be  the  source  of  every  good,  and  the  cure  of  every 
evil.  This  larger  strain  sounds  under  all  their  Psalms  of 
thankfulness  or  hope.  In  their  darkest  days  every  little 
ray  of  light  was  a  stray  gleam  of  this  great  sun-rising 
which  was  at  hand.  Every  sound  of  success  seemed  like 
His  far-off  footstep.  And  so  these  words  of  Isaiah  mount 
to  a  higher  strain  than  any  that  could  have  greeted  an 
Israelite  warrior  who  might  have  made  a  successful  incur- 
sion into  Edomite  soil.  The  prophet  is  singing  of  the 
victorious  Messiah.  He,  that  majestic  figure  that  haunts 
all  Hebrew  history  and  makes  it  all  poetic,  —  He  it  is  that 
comes  up  from  Edom,  which  stands  here  to  represent  the 
sum  of  all  the  foes  of  Israel,  with  stained  garments  that 
show  the  terribleness  of  the  struggle,  and  with  step  and 
face  that  manifest  the  completeness  of  His  victory.  It  is 
the  triumph  of  the  Messiah  that  is  being  sung. 

This  brings  it,  as  you  see,  close  to  us.  This  Hebrew 
Messiah  has  come,  and  is  more  than  the  Hebrew  Messiah : 
He  is  the  Christian's  Christ,  He  is  our  Saviour.  See  how 
the  old  vision  is  elevated  once  more  to  a  yet  larger  ap- 
plication. The  victory  of  Christ,  the  destruction  of  evil 
by  good,  the  conquest  over  the  devU  by  the  Son  of  God, 


40  THE  CONQUEROK  FROM  EDOM. 

•it  cost,  with  pain,  so  that  as  He  comes  forth  His  robes 
are  red  with  blood ;  the  redemption  of  mankind  from  sin 
by  the  divine  and  humau  Saviour,  —  this  is  the  largest 
and  completest  meaning  of  the  ancient  vision.  This  is 
what  the  old  poetry  of  Isaiah  has  to  say  to  us.  Let  ua 
look  at  this  to-night  and  try  to  understand  it.  Let  u? 
try  to  get  at  some  knowledge  of  the  Saviour  coming  back 
from  His  victorious  work  with  the  blood-stains  on  Hia 
garments  and  the  blessmgs  of  peace  in  His  full  hands  to 
give  to  all  His  people. 

I  think  that  very  often  now  this  sounds  strange  and 
incomprehensible;  this  absorption  of  every  struggle  be- 
tween the  good  and  the  evil  that  is  going  on  in  the 
world  into  the  one  great  struggle  of  the  life  and  death 
of  Jesus  Christ ;  but  it  follows  necessarily  from  any  such 
fall  idea  as  we  Christians  hold  of  what  Jesus  Christ  is 
and  of  what  brought  Him  to  this  world.  If  He  be  really 
the  Son  of  God,  bringing  in  an  utterly  new  way  the 
power  of  God  to  bear  on  human  life ;  if  He  be  the  nat- 
ural creator-king  of  humanity,  come  for  the  salvation  of 
humanity ;  then  it  would  seem  to  follow  that  the  work 
of  salvation  must  be  His  and  His  alone :  and  if  we  see 
the  process  of  salvation,  the  struggle  of  the  good  against 
the  evil,  going  on  all  over  the  world,  we  shall  be  ready 
still  to  feel  that  it  is  all  under  His  auspices  and  guidance  ; 
that  the  effort  of  any  benighted  soul  in  any  darkest 
heathen  land  to  get  away  from  its  sins,  and  cast  itself 
upon  an  assured  mercy  of  its  God,  is  part  of  His  great 
work,  is  to  the  full  intelligent  faith  of  the  well-taught 
Christian  believer  just  what  the  struggle  of  a  blind  plant 
underground  to  reach  the  surface  is  to  the  f**^  aspira 
tion  of  the  oak-tree,  which  in  the  full  glory  ot  the  sun- 


THE  CONQUEROR  FROM  EDOM.  41 

liglit  reaches  out  its  eager  branches  toward  the  glorious 
sun,  —  a  result  of  the  same  power,  and  a  contribution  to 
the  same  victorious  success.  All  forces  strive  after  sim- 
plicity and  unity.  Operations  in  nature,  in  mechanics,  in 
chemistry,  which  men  have  long  treated  as  going  ou 
onder  a  variety  of  powers,  are  gradually  showing  them- 
selves to  be  the  fruits  of  one  great  mightier  power,  which 
in  many  various  forms  of  application  is  able  to  produce 
them  all.  This  is  the  most  beautiful  development  of  our 
modern  science.  The  Christian  belief  in  Christ  holds 
the  same  thing  of  the  spiritual  world,  and  unites  all 
partial  victories  everywhere  into  one  great  victory  which 
is  the  triumph  of  its  Lord.  Notice,  I  beg  you,  that  on 
no  other  ground  can  Christianity  stand  with  its  exclusive 
claims,  and  Christianity  is  in  its  very  nature  exclusive. 
Some  vagi'ant  ship  carries  you  over  the  waters  and  sets 
you  down  in  some  most  heathen  island,  where  no  single 
ear  has  ever  heard  the  first  word  about  the  incarnation, 
about  the  birth  at  Bethlehem  or  the  death  on  Calvary. 
You  live  there  long  enough  to  get  into  the  heart  of  those 
savage  folk  and  understand  them,  you  see  what  their 
souls  are  about,  and  lo,  underneath  the  thick  crust  of 
savage  life  you  find  the  same  old  eternal  struggle  of  good 
and  evil,  of  right  and  wrong,  nay  more,  very  blindly, 
very  darkly,  you  find  the  same  old  reaching  after  God, 
and  the  same  assurance  that  He  is  love  and  that  He  may 
show  Himself  in  forgiveness,  which  you  left  behind  you 
in  the  familiar  streets  and  pews  of  Boston.  What  shall 
you  say  about  it  ?  That  what  is  good  in  Boston  is  not 
good  in  your  island  ?  That  good  and  evil  change  their 
characters  with  changing  climates  ?  That  confuses  your 
whole  moral  judgment.     Shall  you  say  that  this  good  in 


42  THE  CONQXJEROR   FROM   EDOM. 

the  island  comes  of  some  local  source,  distinct  from  that 
which  made  the  Christians  good  and  brave  and  patient 
whom  you  used  to  know  at  home  ?  That  cuts  the  mora) 
world  to  bits  and  leaves  no  unity  and  so  no  certainty  or 
stiength.  What  then  ?  If  I  believe  in  Christ  at  home, 
I  believe  in  Him  off  here.  Not  so  strongly  because  in 
the  dark,  but  yet  strongly  because  it  is  His,  here  is  the 
power  of  the  human  Christ  at  work.  Once  accept  what 
is  the  central  truth  of  operative  Christianity,  the  power 
of  an  ever-present  unseen  Spirit,  always  manifesting 
Christ  and  making  Him  influential,  and  then  it  is  not 
hard  to  see  that,  men  being  the  same,  open  to  the  same 
influence  everywhere,  they  may  be  and  they  are  turned 
to  the  one  same  goodness  by  the  power  of  the  one  same 
spirit  of  Christ. 

Indeed  here,  in  the  susceptibility  of  all  men  to  the 
same  influences  of  the  highest  sort,  there  comes  out  the 
only  valuable  proof  of  the  unity  of  the  human  race,  I 
think.  Demonstrate  what  you  may  about  the  diversity 
of  origin  or  structure  of  humanity,  so  long  as  the  soul 
capable  of  the  great  human  struggle  and  the  great  hu- 
man helps  is  in  every  man,  the  human  race  is  one.  On 
the  other  hand,  demonstrate  as  perfectly  as  you  will  the 
identity  of  origin  and  structure  of  all  humanity,  yet  if 
you  find  men  so  spiritually  different  in  two  hemispheres 
that  the  same  largest  obligations  do  not  impi-ess  and  the 
same  largest  loves  do  not  soften  them,  what  does  your 
unity  of  the  human  race  amount  to  ?  Here,  it  seems  to 
me,  Christ,  in  His  broad  appeal  to  all  men  of  all  races,  is 
the  true  assertor  of  the  only  valuable  human  unity. 

If  this  be  so,  then  wherever  there  is  good  at  work  in 
the   world,  we  Christians  may  see  the  progress  of   the 


THE  CONQUEROR  FROM  EDOM.  43 

struggle  and  rejoice  already  in  the  victory  of  Christ.  It 
does  us  good.  It  enlarges  and  simplifies  our  thought  of 
Christ's  religion.  He  shall  conquer.  The  eye  of  faith 
already  sees  Him  coming  up  out  of  Edom  with  the  stains 
upon  His  garments  and  the  step  of  the  victor.  He  shall 
conquer.  But  when  we  say  that,  we  are  driven  home  to 
Him  and  Him  alone  as  our  religion.  He,  nothing  else.  1 
have  no  assurance  that  this  Church,  this  form  of  worship, 
nay,  even  this  minute  faith  which  I  believe  in  and  which 
is  very  dear  to  me,  —  I  have  no  assurance  that  this  is  to 
conquer  all  other  churches,  all  other  sects,  and  occupy  the 
world.  I  feel  very  sure  that  Christ,  before  He  attains 
His  perfect  victory,  must  throw  His  truth  into  new  and 
completer  forms  than  any  it  has  yet  assumed.  I  wait  for 
those  in  perfect  patience  and  without  a  fear,  sure  only 
of  this  one  thing :  that  Christ  will  conquer,  and  in  His 
victory,  however  it  shall  come,  the  old  vision  of  the  He- 
brew prophet  shall  be  stretched  to  cover  the  results  of 
universal  history,  and  so  the  whole  world  shall  be  saved 
in  Him. 

And  now  let  us  go  on  and  look  as  far  as  we  may  into 
the  method  of  this  salvation ;  first  for  the  world  at  large 
and  then  for  the  single  soul,  which  of  course  is  the  point 
of  infinitely  the  most  importance  to  each  of  us.  And  in 
both  let  us  follow  the  story  of  the  old  Jewish  vision. 

"  Who  is  this  that  cometh  from  Edom  ? "  Sin  hangs 
on  the  borders  of  goodness  everywhere,  as  j\ist  across 
the  narrow  Jordan  valley  Edom  always  lay  threateningly 
upon  the  skirts  of  Palestine.  How  terribly  constant  it 
was.  How  it  kept  the  people  on  a  strain  all  the  while. 
The  moment  that  a  Jew  stepped  across  the  border,  the 
Edoraites  were  on  him.     The  moment  a  flock  or  beast  of 


14  THE   CONQUEROR   FROM   EDOM. 

his  wandered  too  far,  the  enemy  had  seized  him.  If  in 
the  carelessness  of  a  festival  the  Israelites  left  the  bor- 
der unguarded,  the  hated  Edomites  found  it  out  and  came 
swooping  down  just  when  the  mirth  ran  highest  and  the 
sentinels  were  least  careful.  If  a  Jew's  field  of  wheat 
was  specially  rich,  the  Edomite  saw  the  green  signal  from 
his  hiil-top,  and  in  the  morning  the  field  was  bare.  There 
was  no  rest,  no  safety.  They  had  met  the  chosen  people 
on  their  way  into  the  promised  land,  and  tried  to  keep 
them  out ;  and  now  that  they  were  safely  in,  there  they 
always  hovered,  wild,  implacable,  and  watchful.  There 
could  be  no  terms  of  compromise  with  them.  They  never 
edept.  They  saw  the  weak  point  in  a  moment ;  they 
struck  it  quick  as  lightning  strikes.  The  constant  dread, 
the  nightmare,  of  Jewish  history  is  this  Edom  lying 
there  upon  the  border,  like  a  lion  crouched  to  spring. 
There  cannot  be  one  great  fight,  or  one  great  war,  and 
chen  the  thing  done  forever.  It  is  an  endless  fight 
with  an  undying  enemy ! 

Edom  upon  the  borders  of  Judah.  We  open  any  page 
of  human  history  and  what  do  we  see  ?  There  is  a  liigher 
life  in  man.  Imperfect,  full  of  mixture,  just  like  that 
mottled  history  of  Hebrewdom ;  yet  still  it  is  in  hu- 
man history  what  Judea  was  in  the  old  world,  —  the 
spiritual,  the  upward,  the  religious  element ;  something 
that  believes  in  God  and  struggles  after  Him.  Not  a 
page  can  you  open  but  its  mark  is  there.  Sometimes  it 
is  an  aspiration  after  civilization,  sometimes  it  is  a  doc- 
trinal movement,  sometimes  it  is  a  mystical  piety  that 
is  developed ;  sometimes  it  is  social ;  sometimes  it  is  as- 
cetic and  purely  individual ;  sometimes  it  is  a  Socrates, 
sometimes  it  is  a  St.  Francis,  sometimes  it  is  a  Luther 


THE  CONQUEROR   FROM   EDOM.  U 

•ometlmes  it  is  a  Florence  Nightingale.  It  is  there  ic 
Bome  shape  always:  this  good  among  the  evil,  this  power 
of  God  among  the  forces  of  men,  this  Judah  in  the  midst 
of  Asia.  But  always  right  on  its  border  lies  the  hostile 
Edom,  watchful,  indefatigable,  inexorable  as  the  redoubta 
ble  old  foe  of  the  Jews.  If  progress  falters  a  moment, 
the  whole  mass  of  obstructive  ignorance  is  rolled  upon  it. 
If  faith  leaves  a  loop-hole  undefended,  the  quick  eye  of 
Atheism  sees  it  from  its  watch-tower  and  hurls  its  quick 
strength  there.  If  goodness  goes  to  sleep  upon  its  arms, 
sleepless  wickedness  is  across  the  valley,  and  the  fields 
which  it  has  taken  months  of  toil  to  sow  and  ripen  are 
swept  off  in  a  night.  Tell  me,  is  not  this  the  impression 
of  the  world,  of  human  life,  that  you  get,  whether  you 
open  the  history  of  any  century  or  unfold  your  morning 
newspaper  ?  The  record  of  a  struggling  charity  is  crowded 
by  the  story  of  the  prison  and  the  court.  The  world 
waits  at  the  church  door  to  catch  the  worshipper  as  he 
comes  out.  The  good  work  of  one  century  relaxes  a  mo- 
ment for  a  breathing  spell,  and  the  next  century  comes 
in  with  its  licentiousness  or  its  superstition.  Always  it  is 
the  higher  life  pressed,  watched,  haunted  by  the  lower  ; 
always  it  is  Judah  with  Edom  at  its  gates.  No  one  great 
battle  comes  to  settle  it  forever :  it  is  an  endless  fight 
with  an  undying  enemy. 

So  in  the  great  world.  How  is  it  in  these  little  worlds, 
these  hearts  which  we  are  carrying  about  ?  You  have  your 
good,  your  spirituality,  your  better  life ;  something  that 
bears  witness  of  God.  In  every  man's  heart  there  is  a 
holy  city,  a  Jerusalem,  where,  loud  or  muffled,  in  some 
voice  from  the  altar  or  some  light  above  the  mercy-seat, 
the  Heavenly  Father  bears  testimony  of  His  goodneaa  and 


46  THE  CONQUEROR  FROM  EDOM. 

tempts  US  to  Himself.  It  may  be  very  dim,  but  there  ii 
is  in  all  of  us.  There  it  is  in  you.  Hence  in  all  men  the 
struggle  of  that  good  with  a  surrounding  evil ;  the  parable 
ot  the  old  Asiatic  geography  forever  wrought  out  into 
hot,  terrible  life.  Do  you  not  know  it,  my  friend,  this 
Edom  of  the  lower  life  hanging  upon  the  borders  of  the 
Judea  which  is  the  better  life  in  you  ?  You  mean  to  be 
pure ;  you  want  to  be  pure  ;  but  some  day  you  venture 
a  mile  across  the  border  of  impurity  by  some  low  jest  or 
foul  indulgence,  and  who  is  the  foe  that  seizes  you  and 
bears  you  off  captive  into  the  heart  of  his  detestable  do- 
minion, where  he  keeps  you  prisoner,  whence  you  come 
out,  at  last,  only  with  a  tottering  body  and  a  corrupted 
soul  ?  You  mean  to  be  true  ;  but  once  your  truth  sleeps 
on  its  guard,  and  the  Edomite  is  over  the  valley,  and  the 
lie  is  right  in  the  very  midst  of  your  well-guarded  truth- 
fulness. You  love  humility  ;  but  some  day  your  humility 
keeps  a  careless  feast  of  self-confidence,  and  before  you 
know  it  the  shout  of  the  invader  pride  is  in  your  ears. 
How  evil  crowds  you.  You  cannot  fight  it  out  at  once 
and  have  it  done.  You  go  on  quietly  for  days  and  think 
the  enemy  is  dead.  Just  when  you  are  safest  there  he 
is  again,  more  alive  than  ever.  I  am  trying  to  tell  the 
atory  of  each  ordinary  life.  I  am  trying  to  make  you 
think  of  that  bad  that  lurks  sleeplessly  by  the  side  of 
every  good.  When  did  you  ever  do  a  good  thing  with 
that  pure,  sweet,  clear,  strong,  and  open  confidence  with 
which  they  must  do  holy  things  who  do  them  in  angelic 
freedom  on  the  open  plains  of  heaven,  where  from  bright 
horizon  to  horizon  there  is  nothing  but  safety  and  God  ? 
We  live  a  spiritual  life  like  the  life  that  our  fathers  used 
to  live  here  in  New  England,  who  always  took  their  gunr 


THE   CONQUEROR   FROM   EDOM.  47 

to  church  with  them  and  smoothed  down  the  graves  of 
their  beloved  dead  in  the  church-yard  that  the  hostile 
and  watchful  Indians  might  not  know  how  weak  they 
were.  It  is  the  Saviour's  word,  "  Behold,  I  send  you  forth 
as  sheep  among  wolves ; "  only  the  sheep  and  the  wolf 
a^-e  both  within  us :  Judah,  with  Edom  forever  at  its  gate. 

It  is  no  wonder  that  just  as  Edom  to  the  Jews  became 
a  great,  terrible  person,  a  giant  lingering  forever  with 
hungry  mouth  and  watchful  eyes  to  seize  them  and  de- 
vour them  at  every  exposure,  so  to  men  getting  this  idea 
of  the  vigilance  and  malignity  of  sin,  sin  too  should  have 
appeared  a  terrible  person,  and  the  human  mind  should 
have  most  readily  adopted  the  scripture  image  of  the 
Satan,  the  personal  Devil,  always  waiting,  watching, 
hating.  It  is  no  wonder  that  sin,  just  like  Edom,  should 
have  stood  out  as  one  undying  foe.  The  change  of  gen- 
erations never  broke  its  power.  It  was  the  same  enemy 
with  which  their  fathers  and  their  grandfathers  and  their 
great-grandfathers  fought.  The  dreadful  conflict  between 
Judah  and  Edom  lasted  on  from  ag^j  to  age,  always  the 
same.     It  was  an  immortal  enemy,  an  eternal  war. 

And  so  when  we  look  back  over  life,  how  dreary  some- 
times it  seems.  What  are  men  doing  in  the  fifth  century, 
or  the  tenth,  or  the  fifteenth?  The  old  familiar  strife 
and  hatred  and  crime  which  we  know  so  well,  how  they 
burst  out  upon  us  with  their  hoarse  fury  the  moment  that 
we  force  open  those  old  rusty  doors.  The  Barbarians 
are  massacring  and  pillaging  in  Italy.  The  Roman  Em- 
perors are  slaughtering  their  subjects  and  dying  them- 
selves by  poison.  The  Inquisition  is  doing  its  horrible 
work  in  Spain.  This  in  public  life  ;  and  then  if  any- 
where you  lift  a  little  conier  of  the  merciful  cover  of  ob- 


i8  THE  CONQUEROR  FROM  EDOM. 

livion  that  has  fallen  upon  private  life,  the  same  old  tu 
mult  of  distress  and  wickedness  is  there  :  poverty,  temp 
tation,  jealousy,  hatred,  deceit,  making  the  little  trag- 
edies of  those  old  homes,  just  as  they  turn  the  decent 
houses  along  our  decent  streets  to-day  into  nests  of  un- 
clean birds.  All  the  while,  bright,  open,  sights  of  good- 
ness, generosity,  truth,  self-devotion,  godliness  ;  these  are 
the  Judahs ;  but  all  the  while  the  Edoms  close  besidf 
them,  just  as  we  see  them  now. 

And  if  you  turn  back  and  look  at  the  history  of  your 
own  life,  which  sometimes  seems  to  you  as  if  it  had  lasted 
as  long  as  all  the  history  of  all  the  ages  put  together, 
what  was  it  that  began  to  break  on  you  as  a  boy  of  ten, 
when  you  first  began  to  realize  yourself  ?  Was  it  not  a 
wonder  whether  you  were  meant  to  be  good  or  bad,  so 
terribly,  and  so  equally,  as  it  seemed,  the  two  power? 
were  matched  against  each  other  in  your  life?  How 
did  your  life  look  to  you  when  you  were  a  young  man 
of  twenty  ?  If  you  had  found  that  verse  of  St.  Paul's, 
did  it  not  tell  the  whole  story  when  you  heard  him  cry, 
"  When  I  would  do  good,  evil  is  present  with  me  "  ?  And 
when  you  were  the  full-grown  strong  man  of  forty,  what 
then  ?  Had  not  the  strength  of  the  enemy  grown  with 
your  strength  ?  Had  not  many  a  power  of  evil,  which 
you  used  to  make  little  of  and  think  your  life  would  shed, 
fastened  itself  close  upon  you  and  showed  that  it  meant 
to  stay,  so  that  in  some  moods  there  still  was  no  word  but 
Paul's,  "  O  wretched  man  that  I  am  ;  who  shall  deliver 
me  from  the  body  of  this  death  ?  "  So  all  along  your 
life.  The  enemy  shifts  his  point  of  attack,  but  he  is 
always  there.  It  gets  to  seem  hopeless  as  the  man  gets 
(>ld,  and  feeble  compromises  with  this  terrible  insatiate 


THE  CONQUEROR  FROM  EDOM.  49 

neigJibor   take   the   place   of    the   young    man's   manly 
etruggles  to  drive  him  out. 

Here  is  where  the  hopelessness  comes  in,  out  of  mere 
long  experience.  I  think  there  is  in  every  man's  heart, 
down  at  the  bottom,  a  conviction  that  the  good  is  stronger 
than  the  bad ;  that  the  right  is  mightier  than  the  wrong. 
I  think  that  any  being  of  pure  human  nature  looking 
from  outside  at  this  strange  mixture,  this  unnatural  civil 
war  that  is  going  on  forever,  would  say  cheei-fuUy,  "  Oh, 
it  cannot  last  long,  the  good  is  so  powerful  that  no  evil 
can  stand  against  it.  Wait  a  few  moments  longer  and 
you  will  see  it  cast  the  intruder  out."  I  think  every 
young  man  starts  with  some  such  cheerful,  courageous 
confidence  as  this.  It  is  only  experience  that  undeceives 
us  and  discourages  us.  The  intruder  is  not  cast  out. 
There  he  is,  just  as  strong  as  he  was  yesterday,  just  as 
strong  as  he  was  ten  years  ago ;  nay,  just  as  strong  as 
when  Abraham  fought  with  him  on  the  field  of  Mamre, 
or  when  the  hermits  struggled  in  vain  to  get  the  better 
of  him  in  the  caves  on  the  banks  of  the  Nile.  There 
seems  to  be  no  reason  why,  unless  some  new  force  comea 
in,  the  struggle  should  not  go  on  forever  as  inconclusively, 
as  hopelessly  as  it  has  gone  on  so  long ;  no  reason  why 
the  two  forces  should  not  live  together  and  fight  to- 
gether till  death  comes  to  separate  them  ;  nay,  no  reason 
why  death  should  separate  them ;  no  reason  why  the  two 
should  not  go  down  together  striving  into  the  dark  rive', 
and  come  out  striving  still  upon  the  other  side,  and  go  on 
in  eternal  strife,  perpetuating  this  human  tragedy  forever. 
This  is  the  great  discouraging  burden  of  our  experience 
of  sin.  "  We  look  and  there  is  none  to  help.  We  won- 
der that  there  is  none  to  uphold."     No  power  )f  salva- 


50  THE  CONQUEROR  FROM  EDOM. 

tion  comes  out  of  the  good  half  of  the  heart  to  conquei 
and  to  kill  the  bad.  We  grow  not  to  expect  to  see  th« 
bad  half  conquered.  Every  morning  we  lift  up  our  eyes, 
and  there  are  the  low  black  hill-tops  across  the  narrow 
valley,  with  the  black  tents  upon  their  sides,  where  Edom 
Uee  in  wait.  Who  shall  deliver  us  from  the  bad  world 
and  our  bad  selves  ? 

And  what  then  ?  It  is  time  for  the  sunrise  when  the 
night  gets  as  dark  as  this.  It  is  time  for  the  Saviour 
when  the  world  and  the  soul  have  learnt  their  helpless- 
ness and  sin.  "  Who  is  this  that  cometh  from  Edom, 
with  dyed  garments  from  Bozrah  ?  this  that  is  glorious  in 
His  apparel,  travelling  in  the  greatness  of  His  strength  ?  " 
Do  you  not  see  the  parable  now  ?  Is  it  possible  that 
this  one  that  we  see  coming,  this  one  on  whose  step,  as 
He  moves  through  history,  the  eyes  of  all  the  ages  are 
fastened,  —  is  it  possible  that  He  is  the  conqueror  of  the 
enemy  and  the  Deliverer  of  the  Soul  ?  He  comes  out  of 
the  enemy's  direction.  The  whole  work  of  the  Saviour 
has  relation  to  and  issues  from  the  fact  of  sin.  If  there 
had  been  no  sin  there  would  have  been  no  Saviour.  "  He 
came  not  to  call  the  righteous,  but  sinners  to  repentance." 
He  comes  from  the  right  direction,  and  He  has  an  attrac- 
tive majesty  of  movement  as  He  first  appears.  This,  as 
to  the  watcher  on  the  hill-tops  of  Judea,  so  to  the  soul 
that  longs  for  some  solution  of  the  spiritual  problem, 
»ome  release  from  the  spiritual  bondage,  is  the  first  as- 
pect of  the  approaching  Christ.  He  comes  from  the 
right  way,  and  He  seems  strong.  I  suppose  this  is  what 
draws  the  souls  of  men,  long  before  they  know  the  whole 
deep  secret  of  the  Christhood,  to  gather  round  Him  and 
gaze  on  Him  with  a  vague,  wistful  interest,  —  this  sort  of 


THE  CONQUEROR  FROM  EDOM.  51 

§ense  that  oecause  He  has  taken  on  Himself  to  deal  with 
their  most  hopeless  difficulty,  which  is  sin,  and  because 
He  is  so  strong  in  His  divinity,  therefore,  even  although 
they  cannot  see  just  what  He  will  do  or  how  He  will 
do  it,  still  in  Him,  if  there  be  hope  at  all,  in  Him  their 
hope  must  be.  And  so  they  gather  round  Him  as  th« 
crowds  used  to  gather  in  the  lanes  of  Palestine  ■  so  they 
come  to  church ;  so  they  look  up  into  His  face ;  so  they 
turn  over  the  pages  of  His  Bible.  Oh,  if  He  could  help 
OS  I     Oh,  if  this  could  be  the  deliverer  that  we  need  ! 

Now  let  us  look  at  what  He  says  to  His  anxious  ques- 
tioner ;  what  account  of  HimseK  He  gives  ;  what  He  has 
done  to  Edom  ;  and  especially  what  mean  these  blood- 
stains on  His  robes. 

1.  We  ask  Him,  "  Who  is  this  ? "  and  He  replies. 
Hear  His  answer :  "  I  that  come  in  righteousness,  mighty 
to  save."  That  reassures  us,  and  is  good  at  the  very  out- 
set. The  Saviour  comes  in  the  strength  of  righteousness. 
Righteousness  is  at  the  bottom  of  all  things.  Righteous- 
ness is  thorough.  It  is  the  very  spirit  of  unsparing  truth. 
Any  reform  or  salvation  of  which  the  pow^^  is  right- 
eousness must  go  down  to  the  very  root  of  the  trouble , 
must  extenuate  and  cover  over  nothing  ;  must  expose 
and  convict  completely,  in  order  that  it  may  completely 
heal.  And  this  is  the  power  of  the  salvation  of  Christ. 
It  makes  no  compromise  between  the  good  and  the  evil, 
between  Judah  and  Edom.  Edom  must  be  destroyed, 
not  parleyed  with ;  sin  must  be  beaten  down  and  not 
conciliated  ;  good  must  thrive  by  the  defeat  and  not 
merely  by  the  tolerance  of  evil.  We  cannot  tell  in  some 
of  those  old  wars  what  Edomitish  feeling  there  may  have 
been  among  the  Jews ;  how  many  Jews  there  may  have 


62  THE  CONQUEROR  FROM  EDOM. 

been  who  had  some  connection  with  Edoin,  who  rathei 
liked  the  Edomites,  and  only  asked  of  them  that  the 
two  nations  should  live  in  peace  together  and  not  figlit 
I  cannot  know  —  perhaps  you  do  not  know  yourself  — 
how  much  there  may  be  in  your  heart  which  is  so  boucd 
np  with  old  sin  that  you  do  not  want  it  destroyed  com- 
pletely, that  you  would  have  the  sin  and  the  gooduesp 
live  on  side  by  side  if  only  they  would  not  fight.  It  is 
the  fighting  and  not  the  very  presence  of  sin  that  troublen 
you.  But  this  Saviour  of  ours  is  too  thorough  for  that 
He  cannot  help  you  unless  you  want  Him  to  beat  the 
old  enemy  down  and  kill  him  utterly.  He  will  be  the 
negotiator  of  no  low  compromise.  He  wants  to  set  up 
the  standard  of  absolute  holiness  in  the  midst  of  a  nature 
all  conquered  and  totally  possessed  by  Him.  Tell  me, 
is  there  any  diflBculty  here  ?  Are  you  clinging  to  any 
sin  that  is  so  dear  to  you  that  you  cannot  give  it  up  ? 
Let  the  clear,  inexorable  claims  of  this  Saviour  of  ours 
cut  down  deep  and  disclose  your  own  heart  to  yourself, 
for  He  cannot  save  you  unless  He  saves  you  in  perfect 
righteousness. 

2.  But  hear  the  next  question.  The  questioner  won- 
ders, as  the  Saviour  comes  nearer,  at  the  strange  signs  of 
battle  and  agony  upon  His  robes.  "  Wherefore  art  Thou 
red  in  Thine  apparel,  and  Thy  garments  like  him  that 
treadeth  in  the  winefat  ?  "  And  the  answer  is,  "  I  have 
trodden  the  wine-press;"  "I  will  tread  them  in  mine 
anger  and  trample  them  in  my  fury,  and  their  blood  shall 
be  sprinkled  upon  my  garments,  and  I  will  stain  all  my 
raiment."  Behold,  it  is  no  holiday  monarch  coming  with 
a  bloodless  triumph.  It  has  been  no  pageant  of  a  day 
this  strife  with  sin.     The  robes  have  trailed  in  the  blood 


THE  CONQUEROR   FROM    EDOM.  58 

The  sword  is  dented  with  conflict.  The  power  of  God 
lias  struggled  with  the  enemy  and  subdued  him  only  in 
the  agony  of  strife.  My  friends,  far  be  it  from  me  to 
undertake  to  read  all  the  deep  mystery  that  is  in  this 
picture.  Only  this  I  know  is  the  burden  and  soul  of  it 
aU,  this  truth,  —  that  sin  is  a  horrible,  strong,  positive 
thing,  and  that  not  even  divinity  grapples  with  him  and 
subdues  him  except  in  strife  and  pain.  What  pain  may 
mean  to  the  Infinite  and  Divine,  what  difficulty  may 
mean  to  Omnipotence,  I  cannot  tell.  Only  I  know  that 
all  that  they  could  mean  they  meant  here.  This  symbol 
of  the  blood,  —  and  by  and  by,  when  we  turn  from  the 
Old  Testament  to  the  New,  from  the  prophecy  to  the  ful- 
filment, we  find  that  it  was  not  only  the  enemy's  blood, 
but  His  own  blood  too,  that  stained  the  victorious  de- 
liverer's robes,  —  this  symbol  of  the  blood  bears  this 
great  truth,  which  has  been  the  power  of  salvation  to 
millions  of  hearts,  and  which  must  make  this  conqueror 
ihe  Saviour  of  your  heart  too,  the  truth  that  only  in  self- 
sacrifice  and  suffering  could  even  God  conquer  sin.  Sin 
is  never  so  dreadful  as  when  we  see  the  Saviour  with 
that  blood  upon  His  garments.  And  the  Saviour  Him- 
self, surely  He  is  never  so  dear,  never  wins  so  utter  and 
80  tender  a  love,  as  when  we  see  what  it  has  cost  Him  to 
save  us.  Out  of  that  love  born  of  His  suffering  comes 
the  new  impulse  after  a  holy  life ;  and  so  when  we  stand 
at  last  purified  by  the  power  of  grateful  obedience,  it 
shall  be  said  of  us,  binding  our  holiness  and  escape  from 
oui  sin  close  to  our  Lord's  struggle  with  sin  for  us,  that 
we  have  "  washed  our  robes  and  made  them  white  in 
\he  blood  of  the  Lamb." 

3.  But  He  says  something  more.     Not  merely  He  baa 


b4  THE  CONQUEROR  FROM  EDOM. 

conquered  completely  and  conquered  in  saffering ;  H« 
has  conquered  alone.  As  any  one  reads  through  the 
Gospels  he  feels  how  hopeless  the  attempt  would  be  to 
tell  of  the  loneliness  of  that  life  which  Jesus  lived.  "  I 
have  trodden  the  wine-press  alone,  and  of  the  people 
there  was  none  with  me.  T  looked  and  there  was  none 
to  help.  Therefore  mine  own  arm  brought  salvation." 
He  had  friends,  but  we  always  feel  how  far  off  they 
stood  from  the  deepest  centre  of  His  heart.  He  had  dis 
ciples,  but  they  never  came  into  the  inner  circles  of  His 
self-knowledge.  He  had  fellow-workers,  but  they  only 
handed  round  the  broken  bread  and  jfishes  in  the  mira- 
cle, or  ordered  the  guest  chamber  on  the  Passover  night. 
They  never  came  into  the  deepest  work  of  His  life.  With 
the  mysterious  suffering  that  saved  the  world  they  had 
nothing  to  do.  It  was  not  only  their  cowardice,  it  was 
the  necessary  solitariness  of  the  task  to  which  He  went, 
which  caused  that  when  the  hands  of  sin  were  laid  on 
Him  to  drag  Him  to  the  cross,  "  all  His  disciples  for- 
sook Him  and  fled."  It  was  a  work  that  He  alone  coulcl 
do,  that  He  must  do  alone.  And  is  it  not  so  always  ? 
Our  brothers  may  help  the  work  that  Christ  does  in  oui 
(jouls  in  some  of  its  details.  They  may  bring  the  en- 
couragement of  their  sympathetic  Christian  lives.  They 
may  lift  up  the  hand  and  point  with  the  finger  to  where 
the  Saviour  comes,  saying,  "  Behold  the  Lamb  of  God. 
But  in  all  the  deep  work  of  salvation  itself,  in  all  that 
impulse  made  up  of  perception  of  the  perfect  holiness 
and  gratitude  for  forgiven  sin  which  draws  the  soul 
Btraight  and  close  to  the  divme  heart,  —  in  all  that,  no 
one  has  any  part  but  the  Lord  Himself.  He  conquer? 
sin     He  brings  out  victory  in  His  open  ha^id.    From  His 


THE  CONQUEROR  FROM  EDOM.  66 

hand  we  take  it  by  the  power  of  prayer,  and  to  Him  alone 
we  render  thanks  here  and  forever. 

4.  And  yet  once  more.  What  was  the  fruit  of  this 
victory  over  Edom  which  the  Seer  of  Israel  discovered 
from  his  mountain-top  ?  It  set  Israel  free  from  continual 
harassing  and  fear,  and  gave  her  a  chance  to  develop  along 
the  way  that  God  had  marked  out  for  her.  Freedom  I 
That  is  the  word.  It  built  no  cities  ;  it  sowed  no  fields ; 
it  only  broke  off  the  burden  of  that  hostile  presence  and 
bade  the  chosen  nation  go  free  into  its  destiny.  And  so 
what  is  the  fruit  of  the  salvation  that  the  divine  Saviour 
brings  to  the  souls  of  men  ?  It  does  not  finish  them  at 
once  ;  it  does  not  fill  and  stock  their  lives  with  heavenly 
richness  in  a  moment.  But  it  does  just  this.  It  sets 
them  free ;  it  takes  off  the  load  of  sin  ;  it  gives  us  a 
new  chance  ;  it  secures  forgiveness,  and  says  to  the  poor 
soul,  that  has  been  thinking  there  was  no  use  of  trying  to 
stagger  on  with  such  a  load.  Go  on ;  your  burden  is  re- 
moved. Go  on,  go  up  to  the  home  that  you  were  made 
for,  and  the  life  in  God. 

And  notice  that  this  conqueror  who  comes,  comef 
fitrong,  —  "  travelling  in  the  greatness  of  His  strength.' 
He  has  not  left  His  might  behind  Him  in  the  struggle 
He  is  all  ready,  with  the  same  strength  with  which  He 
conquered,  to  enter  in  and  rule  and  educate  the  nation 
He  has  saved.  And  so  the  Saviour  has  not  done  all  when 
He  has  forgiven  you.  By  the  same  strength  of  love  and 
patience  which  saved  you  upon  Calvary,  He  will  come 
in,  if  you  will  let  Him,  and  train  your  saved  life  into  per- 
fectnes3  of  grace  and  glory. 

So,  my  dear  friend,  if  you  are  in  earnest  I  stand  and 
point   to  you   the  way   of  life.     There  is   the  Savioui. 


56  THE   CONQUEROR  FROM  EDOiL 

victorious  for  you.  He  has  conquered  sin,  so  that  yon 
need  not  be  its  servant  any  longer.  Now  let  Him  con- 
quer you  by  His  great  love,  and  so  let  His  victory  be  com- 
plete. For  His  first  victory  is  all  in  vain  for  you  and  me, 
unless  we  thank  Him  for  it,  and  take  Him  for  our  King, 
and  dedicate  our  obedient  lives  to  Him,  and  let  Hira  lead 
us  into  all  the  holiness  and  bappiueaa  of  His  salvatica 
hare,  and  yet  more  hereafter. 


IV. 

KEEPING  THE  FAITM. 

"  I  hare  kepr  the  faith."  —  2  Tut.  iT.  7.- 

This  was  the  satisfaction  on  which  Paul's  mind  rested 
when  he  contemplated  the  close  of  his  earthly  work.  It 
was  almost  done.  The  time  of  his  departure  was  at 
hand.  In  this  epistle  he  is  almost  delegating  his  mission, 
with  the  rich  lessons  of  faith  and  prudence  which  it  had 
taught  him,  to  his  favorite  disciple ;  and  as  he  looks  back 
over  his  life,  it  is  interesting  to  see  where  his  mind  rests, 
and  to  hear  him  say  with  such  evident  thankfulness  and 
hopefulness,  "  I  have  kept  the  faith."  What  do  men  think 
of  when  they  come  to  die  ?  There  must  be  a  great  dif- 
ference in  the  way  that  different  men  look  back  from  the 
margin  upon  the  lives  that  they  have  finished,  and  in  the 
various  things  on  which  they  dwell  with  pleasure.  The 
lowest  kind  of  man  may  merely  summon  the  ghosts  of 
his  past  pleasures  to  cheat  him  with  the  illusion  of  a  still 
present  reality ;  may  dream  of  doing  over  again  those 
things  which  it  was  so  pleasant  once  to  do,  and  think 
what  a  good  time  he  has  had  in  the  world.  The  man 
whose  life  has  degenerated  into  mere  routine  and  habit 
spends  his  old  age  in  going  over,  even  without  pleasure, 
the  monotonous  occupations  that  have  filled  his  days 
and  the  old  captain  drills  his  soldiers,  and  the  old  clerk 
ftdds  up  his  columns,  as  they  lie  upon  their  dreary  death* 


68  KEEPING   THE   FAITH, 

beds.  But  higher  men  think  higher  things  of  their  past 
lives.  "  I  have  been  powerful ;  I  have  turned  the  cur- 
rents, and  made  the  world  different."  That  ia  a  great 
comfort  for  many  a  strong  man  to  think  of  as  he  dies. 
"  I  have  been  useful ;  I  have  made  the  world  better," 
is  a  m«ch  nobler  satisfaction.  "  I  have  been  honored 
I  have  made  men  regard  and  love  me,"  is  a  pleasant 
thought  which  has  made  death  harder  and  easier  at  once 
to  many  men ;  others  have  looked  back  into  rich  fields  of 
knowledge  through  which  their  path  has  laiu,  and  said 
rejoicingly  and  hopefully,  "  I  have  learned  much  ;  "  while 
others  have  had  no  better  comfort  to  lay  to  their  hearts 
than  merely,  "  I  have  made  a  great  deal  of  money ; " 
and  not  a  few,  weary  of  life,  have  laid  down  their  heads 
to  die  with  no  profounder  thought  than  just  that  it  was 
over,  that  at  last  they  had  got  through. 

I  think  it  may  be  interesting  to  see  something  of  the 
position  of  one  who,  so  different  from  all  of  these,  looked 
back  over  his  life  and  described  his  success,  the  aspect  of 
his  eventful  career  which  it  was  most  pleasant  for  him  to 
look  at,  thus :  "I  have  kept  the  faith."  There  are  not 
a  few  of  our  present  every-day  questions  which  such  a 
consideration  will  touch. 

What  dees  St.  Paul  mean,  then,  by  the  faith  which  he 
has  kept?  Is  he  rejoicing  that  he  has  been  true  to  a 
certain  scheme  of  doctrine,  or  that  he  has  preserved  a 
certain  temper  of  soul  and  spiritual  relationship  to  God  ? 
For  thj  term  "faith"  is  a  very  large  one.  There  can 
be  no  d:»ubt,  I  think,  that  he  means  both,  and  that 
the  latter  meaning  is  a  very  deep  and  important  one,  aa 
we  shall  see.  But  this  term,  "  the  faith,"  did  signify 
for  him,  beyond  all  doubt,  a  certain  group  of  truths,  alj 


KEEPING   THE   FAITH.  69 

bound  together  by  their  common  unity  of  source  and 
unity  of  purpose.  Paul  was  too  wise  and  profound  not 
to  keep  this  always  in  sight.  That  there  must  be  intel- 
lectual conceptions  as  the  base  of  strong,  consistent,  and 
effective  feeling  is  a  necessity  which  he  continually  recog- 
nizes; and  the  faith  which  he  is  thankful  to  have  kept 
is,  first  of  all,  that  truth  which  had  been  made  known  to 
him  and  to  the  Church  by  God.  The  first  thing,  then, 
that  strikes  us  is  that  when  Paul  said  that  he  had 
kept  the  faith,  he  evidently  believed  that  there  was  a 
faith  to  keep.  At  the  present  day,  many  scholars  of 
the  New  Testament,  finding  very  different  forms  of  state- 
ment in  the  epistles  of  St.  Paul  from  those  which  fill  the 
four  Gospels,  and  seeming  even  to  find  in  the  epistles 
some  doctrines  which  do  not  appear  to  them  to  be  taught, 
even  by  implication,  in  the  words  of  Christ,  have  been 
led  to  believe  that  St.  Paul  made  his  theology  for  him- 
self ;  that  with  a  strong  and  very  original  mind  he  shaped 
for  himself  the  system  of  truth  which  then  he  taught  to 
his  disciples,  and  which  thus  has  passed  into  the  belief 
of  the  Christian  Church.  We  hear  much  of  a  Pauline 
theology.  It  is  a  favorite  idea.  These  doctrines  are  not 
Christ's,  but  Paul's,  stamped  with  his  peculiar  character, 
and  enforced  only  by  his  personal  authority.  I  cannot 
but  think  that  this  text  of  ours,  the  dying  utterance  of 
the  great  apostle,  proves  very  clearly  that  he  had  no  such 
idea  about  his  belief  and  teaching.  To  him  the  truth 
which  he  believed  was  not  a  doctrine  which  he  had  dis- 
covered, but  the  faith  which  he  had  kept.  The  faith 
was  a  body  of  truth  given  to  him,  which  he  had  to 
hold  and  to  use  and  to  apply,  but  which  he  had  not 
made  and  was  net  to  improve.     He  knew  nothing  of  a 


t)Q  KEEPING   THE   FAITH. 

Pauline  theology.  It  waa  the  word  of  Christ  which  he 
preached.  It  does  not  prove  that  there  was  not  such  a 
thing,  but  it  does  prove  that  he  knew  nothing  of  it.  It 
existed  without  his  consciousness,  if  it  existed  at  all. 
What  he  meant  to  do,  what  he  believed  that  he  had  done 
when  he  died,  was  not  to  think  out  a  system  which  should 
rest  upon  such  proof  as  he  could  bring,  but  merely  to  hold 
and  to  transmit  a  revelation  which  God  had  given  him. 
Between  these  two  every  religious  teacher  must  choose. 
There  are  schools  of  thought  and  there  are  revelations 
of  God.  Every  teacher  must  be  either  a  leader  in  the 
first  or  a  messenger  of  the  second.  St.  Paul  considered 
himself,  and  boasted  that  he  was,  the  latter.  His  own 
personality  was  there.  It  colored,  but  it  did  not  create, 
his  truth.  Its  weight  pressed  the  seal  of  the  faith  down 
upon  his  disciples'  hearts,  but  the  device  upon  the  seal 
itself  was  none  of  his,  —  was  only  God's.  This  was  Paul's 
idea  of  himself  and  his  work,  and  he  certainly  was  clear- 
sig^ited,  and  understood  both  himself  and  his  work  pretty 
well. 

We  want,  then,  to  consider  the  condition  of  one  who, 
having  thus  learned  and  held  a  positive  faith,  continues 
to  hold  it,  —  holds  it  to  the  end.  He  keeps  the  faith. 
We  need  not  confine  our  thought  to  St.  Paul.  An  old 
man  is  dying,  and  as  he  lets  go  the  things  which  are 
trivial  and  accidental  to  lay  hold  of  what  is  essential 
and  important  to  him,  this  is  what  comes  to  his  mind 
with  special  satisfaction  :  "  I  have  kept  the  faith."  The 
things  that  he  believed  as  a  boy  he  has  believed  all 
along,  in  every  stage  of  his  growing  manhood,  and  he 
is  believing  still.  This  continuous  faith  gives  a  unity  to 
the  life  that  has  seen  so  many  changes      All  besides  is 


KEEPING   THE   FAITH.  61 

altered,  but  that  is  the  same.  The  boy  with  his  round 
cheek  and  bright  eye,  the  youth  with  his  quick  imagi 
nation,  the  young  man  witl  his  romance  of  love,  the 
strong  mature  man  who  ruled  his  great  business,  —  you 
can  find  nothing  of  these  in  the  feeble  figure  that  lies  be' 
fore  you,  waiting  for  the  end.  He  can  scarcely  recognize 
himself  as  having  been  either  of  these.  But  one  strong 
cord  of  identity  runs  back,  still  unbroken,  —  he  is  the 
same  believer  that  he  has  always  been.  He  has  kept  the 
faith. 

And  this  suggests  that  there  may  be  both  bad  and 
good  ways  in  which  a  man  may  utter  these  words  of 
Paul.  The  bad  ways  are  evident.  There  is  a  certain 
sort  of  identification  with  our  opinions  and  beliefs  which 
brings  us  in  time  to  value  them  simply  because  they  are 
ours,  not  for  their  own  proved  truth.  And  then  there 
is  the  pride  in  mere  firmness,  which  is  proud  of  having 
held  the  same  ground  for  a  great  many  years,  and  re- 
fuses to  desert  it,  not  because  the  ground  is  good,  but 
because  the  man  is  too  obstinate  to  change.  Pride  and 
obstinacy  I  Where  ia  the  faithfulness  to  a  good  cause 
which  the  world  has  rightly  honored,  that  has  not  had 
some  lurking  mixture  of  these  subtle  counterfeits  ?  The 
very  martyr  at  the  stake  must  surely  sometimes  have 
known  that  nothing  but  the  fire  of  his  martyrdom  could 
finally  purge  him  perfectly  of  these,  and  leave  only  the 
good  elements  of  persistent  faith,  which  are  devotion  to 
the  truth  for  its  own  essential  value  and  a  gradually- 
acquired  thankfulness  for  the  good  that  the  truth  in  our 
long  loyalty  to  it  has  done  for  us.  It  is  these  that  make 
the  persistency  of  belief  reasonable  and  pure.  It  is  the 
second  of  these  —  the  gradual  sense  of  what  the  truth  we 


(52  KEEPING   THE   FAITH. 

hold  has  done  for  us,  the  relation  which  the  absolute  truth 
has  acquired  to  our  personal  experience  —  that  makes  our 
hold  upon  it  stronger  and  tighter  the  longer  that  we  hold 
it,  the  older  that  we  grow. 

For  I  think  that  the  first  condition  of  any  permanen 
hold  on  any  truth  is  this,  that  the  truth  itself  should 
be  live  enough  and  large  enough  to  open  constantly  and 
bring  to  every  new  condition  through  which  we  pass 
some  new  experience  of  itself.  The  truth  that  is  Uctrrow 
and  partial  we  outgrow ;  only  the  truth  that  is  broad 
and  complete  grows  up  with  us  and  can  be  kept.  The 
one  is  like  the  clothes  of  childhood  that  are  cast  aside ; 
the  other  is  like  the  live  body  that  grows  up  with  the 
growing  soul  and  at  each  stage  offers  it  a  fit  instrument 
for  its  work  and  a  fit  medium  through  which  to  receive 
its  education.  You  must  teach  your  children  truth  in 
part,  but  the  partial  truth  you  teach  them  must  be  true 
and  so  have  in  it  the  essential  completeness  of  all  truth, 
or  else  they  will  outgrow  it  and  cast  it  off  as  hundreds  of 
growing  children  do  leave  behind  the  whole  well-meant 
but  narrowly-conceived  religion  of  their  nurseries,  as  they 
pass  out  of  the  nursery -door  into  the  world. 

The  true  faith  which  a  man  has  kept  up  to  the  end  of 
his  life  must  be  one  that  has  opened  with  his  growth  and 
constantly  won  new  reality  and  color  from  his  changing 
experience.  The  old  man  does  believe  what  the  child 
believed  ;  but  how  different  it  is,  though  still  the  same. 
It  is  the  field  that  once  held  the  seed,  now  waving  and 
rustling  under  the  autumn  wind  with  the  harvest  that 
it  holds,  yet  all  the  time  it  has  kept  the  corn.  The  joy  of 
his  life  has  richeued  his  belief.  His  sorrow  has  deepened 
it.     His  doubts  have  sobered  it.     His  enthusiasms  have 


KEEPING   THE   FAITH.  63 

fired  it.  His  labor  has  purified  it.  This  is  the  work 
that  life  does  upon  faith.  This  is  the  beauty  of  an  old 
man's  religion.  His  doctrines  are  like  the  house  that  he 
has  lived  in,  rich  with  associations  which  make  it  certain 
that  he  will  never  move  out  of  it.  His  doctrines  have 
been  illustrated  and  strengthen  3d  and  endeared  by  the 
good  help  they  have  given  to  his  life.  And  no  doctrine 
that  has  not  done  this  can  be  really  held  up  to  the  end 
with  any  such  vital  grasp  as  will  enable  us  to  carry  it 
with  us  through  the  river  and  enter  with  it  into  the  new 
life  beyond. 

And  again,  is  it  not  true  that  any  belief  which  we 
really  keep  up  to  the  end  of  life  must  at  some  time  have 
become  for  us  a  personal  conviction,  resting  upon  evi- 
dence of  its  own  ?  We  get  all  our  notions  and  especially 
our  religious  notions,  at  first,  by  mere  tradition.  Some- 
body tells  us  that  this  is  true,  and  because  we  have  no 
evidence  that  it  is  not,  and  because  we  know  of  nothiu^^ 
else  to  believe,  we  believe  what  we  are  told.  But  by 
and  by  the  age  of  pure  tradition  passes.  The  capacity 
for  evidence  arrives  ;  and  what  I  claim  is,  that  the  man 
who  does  not  win  some  personal  conviction  of  the  truth 
of  what  he  holds  cannot  be  truly  said  to  hold  it.  He 
may  stih  range  himself  under  the  banner  of  the  belief 
that  he  was  taught.  When  men  ask  him  he  may  say, 
"  That  is  my  religion  ;  "  but  if,  when  he  is  asked  why 
he  believes  it,  he  can  give  no  better  answer  than  merely 
"  I  was  taught  so,"  he  is  not  a  real,  he  certainly  is  not 
a  reliable,  holder  of  the  truth.  The  evidence  may  be  of 
various  kinds,  external  or  internal,  of  argument  or  of 
experience.  I  do  not  say  that  every  Christian  must 
■study  books,  but  by  some  personal  witness  addressed   tc 


64  KEEPING  THE   FAITH. 

that  faculty  which  is  the  receptive  faculty  in  him,  —  th« 
intellect,  the  conscience,  or  the  heart,  —  the  truth  must 
come  with  conviction  or  it  never  really  is  his  truth.  There 
is  a  time  when  the  nature  comes  of  age  with  reference  to 
this  whole  matter  of  belief.  If  there  be  exceptions, 
if  there  be  those  who  must  live  in  the  region  of  tradition 
all  their  days,  they  are  to  reasonable  men  what  imbeciles 
and  idiots,  whom  the  law  keeps  all  their  lives  in  a  con- 
dition of  childhood  and  wardship,  are  to  the  young  men 
whom  it  compels  at  a  right  age  to  take  the  responsibility 
of  their  own  lives. 

All  this,  of  course,  has  nothing  to  do  with  St.  Paul, 
because  his  faith,  from  the  first,  rested  upon  its  own  evi- 
dence. It  did  not  come  to  him  in  childhood  from  other 
men,  but  in  the  full  strength  of  his  reasonable  manhood 
straight  from  Christ  Himself.  He  never  passed  through 
that  middle  region  where  tradition  and  conviction  mix. 
His  Christian  life  was  like  the  natui'al  life  of  Adam,  born 
mature,  without  a  childhood  ;  and  so  to  some  extent  the 
lives  of  aU  the  Apostles  and  early  Christians  must  have 
been.  But  now  almost  every  life  must  pass  through 
that  middle  country,  and  many  find  it  very  boisterous 
and  dark.  It  is  the  land  where  doubt  hangs  thick ;  the 
time  between  the  moonlight  and  the  sunlight,  which  is 
the  bleakest  of  the  day.  When  I  see  what  to  somo 
people  seems  so  inconsistent,  a  man  whose  whole  heart 
IS  clinging  to  a  religion  at  which  the  head  is  sorely  puz- 
iled,  who  loves  intensely  what  he  yet  cannot  say  that  he 
believes,  I  think  I  see  one  whom  God  is  leading  through 
this  foggy  middle  land.  His  love  will  help  him  to  the 
evidence  and  meanwhile  will  hold  him  from  falling  till 
the  evidence  ^ows  clear.   Men,  believers  and  unbelievers, 


KEEPING   THE   FAITH.  65 

fitjm  their  different  points  of  view,  distrust  one  who  ia 
in  just  this  state,  ask  how  he  can  love  a  truth  which  he 
cannot  say  that  he  beheves  is  true,  but  after  all  this 
familiar  experience,  this  condition  in  which  some  cer- 
tainly are  to  whom  I  speak  to-day,  verifies  the  words  of 
the  old  Church  Father,  which  have  always  been  felt  to 
be  true,  that  "  human  things  must  be  known  in  order  to 
be  loved,  while  divine  things,  on  the  other  hand,  must  be 
loved  in  order  to  be  known." 

I  know,  indeed,  how  much  a  merely  traditional  relig- 
ion will  inspire  men  to  do.  I  know  that  for  a  faith 
which  is  not  really  theirs,  but  only  what  they  call  it, 
"  their  fathers'  faith,"  men  will  dispute  and  argue,  make 
friendships  and  break  them,  contribute  money,  under- 
take great  labors,  change  the  whole  outward  tenor  of 
their  life.  I  know  that  men  will  suffer  for  it.  I  am 
not  sure  but  they  will  die  to  uphold  a  creed  to  which 
they  were  born,  and  with  which  their  own  character  for 
firmness  and  consistency  has  become  involved.  All  this 
a  traditional  faith  can  do.  It  can  do  every  thing  except 
one,  and  that  it  can  never  do.  It  can  never  feed  a  spirit- 
ual life  and  build  a  man  up  in  holiness  and  grace.  Be- 
fore it  can  do  that  our  fathers'  faith  must  first  by  strong 
personal  conviction  become  ours. 

It  is  this  feeling  of  the  supreme  importance  of  per- 
sonal conviction  which  has  led  to  a  good  many  strange 
ideas  about  the  religious  education  of  children.  You  have 
heard  people  say,  perhaps  some  of  you  have  thought  your- 
selves, that  it  was  not  right  to  give  children  any  positive 
religious  teaching ;  that  you  must  not  put  into  their  minda 
what  you  hold  to  be  the  truth,  but  leave  them  by  and  by 
to  gather  for  themselves  the  convictions  which  should 
ft 


66  KEEPING   THE   FAITH. 

come  to  them  when  they  are  capable  of  being  convinced 
It  is  certainly  very  much  like  saying  that  you  ought  not 
to  feed  a  child  gratuitously  in  his  earliest  years,  because 
the  time  will  come  when  he  will  have  to  earn  his  own 
living  and  to  feed  himself.  You  feed  him  as  a  child  just 
that  you  may  bring  him  on,  and  make  him  ready  by  and 
by  to  feed  himself.  After  that,  to  keep  on  feeding  him 
would  do  him  harm.  And  so  you  teach  a  child  religious 
truth,  using  his  faculty  of  trust  in  authority,  only  just 
in  order  that  by  and  by  he  may  search  for  himself  and  re- 
ceive conviction  of  what  is  true.  After  that,  to  teach  him 
to  believe  things  on  your  word  would  do  him  harm.  Any 
other  way  is  blind  and  disloyal  to  the  facts  of  life.  Life 
is  one  in  many,  a  unity  in  manifold  diversity.  The  great 
purpose  of  life  —  the  shaping  of  character  by  truth  — 
is  to  be  sought  in  all  the  life.  There  are  no  wasted  hours. 
It  must  begin  in  the  life's  morning  and  run  on  till  the 
nightfall  comes.  With  the  first  opening  of  conscious  ex- 
istence, —  nay,  who  can  say  how  long  before  existence  be- 
comes conscious, —  this  process,  the  shaping  of  character  by 
truth,  begins.  In  each  period  of  the  changing  life  it  may 
change  its  methods  and  yet  be  the  same  process  still.  In 
the  early  life  the  channel  through  which  truth  enters  for 
its  work  is  obedient  trust.  Later  it  is  individual  convic- 
tion ;  but  he  maiigles  the  life,  and  loses  its  symmetry  and 
unity,  who  brea,ks  off  either  half  or  dishonors  either  chan- 
nel ;  who  either  thinks  there  can  be  no  religion  till  the 
mind  can  understand  its  grounds,  or  tries  to  keep  the  ma- 
ture mind  under  the  power  of  traditional  ideas  of  which 
it  has  received  no  personal  conviction. 

And  here  I  think  that,  rightly  seen,  the  culture  of  our 
Church  asserts  its  wisdom.     The  Church  has  in  herself 


KEEPING   THE   FAITH.  67 

the  very  doctrine  of  tradition.  She  teaches  the  child  a 
faith  that  has  the  warrant  of  the  ages,  full  of  devotion  and 
of  love.  She  calls  on  him  to  believe  doctrines  of  which 
he  cannot  be  convinced  as  yet.  The  tradition,  the  he 
reditation  of  belief,  the  unity  of  the  human  history,  are 
ideas  very  familiar  to  her,  of  which  she  constantly  and 
beautifully  makes  use.  And  yet  she  does  not  disown  her 
work  of  teaching  and  arguing  and  convincing.  She  can- 
not, and  yet  be  true  to  her  mission.  She  teaches  the 
young  with  the  voice  of  authority ;  she  addresses  the  ma- 
ture with  the  voice  of  reason.  Let  her  give  up  the  first 
function,  and  her  assemblies  would  turn  into  mere  socie- 
ties of  debate.  Let  her  abandon  the  second,  and  they 
must  be  blighted  with  some  doctrine  of  infallibility.  Her 
baptism  receives  a  child  into  the  traditionary  culture, 
and  her  commemorative  Supper  is  an  expression  of  the 
adult  believer's  personal  conviction  of  the  faith  of  Christ 
With  such  completeness,  such  constant  sense  of  its  unity, 
does  the  true  Christian  Church  deal  with  the  human  life 
that  her  Master  gives  into  her  care. 

And  there  is  still  another  feeling,  which  goes  even  far- 
ther than  this  desire  to  exclude  children  from  positive 
religious  teaching.  Some  people  seem  to  think  that  it  ia 
bad  for  any  man  to  have  definitely  accepted  a  religious 
belief  in  which  he  proposes  to  live  and  die,  which  he 
never  expects  to  change.  It  is  the  loose  popular  feeling 
against  creeds.  "  Have  your  creeds,"  says,  in  substance, 
one  of  our  teachers,  "  if  you  must,  but  build  them  like 
birds'  nests,  to  be  used  only  this  year."  Such  a  feeling 
would  make  it  disreputable  for  any  man  to  say,  more 
than  one  year  hence,  "  I  have  kept  the  faith."  To 
*ay  it  at  the  close  of  a  lifetime,  for  all  the  life;,  would 


t>8  KEEPING   THE  FAITH. 

prove  the  man  to  be  either  insincere  or  blindly  stupid 
It  is  the  yiolent  protest  against  the  deadness  of  tradi- 
tional religion  which  would  substitute  for  it  the  galvanic 
life  of  ever-altering  whim.  Surely  there  is  something 
at  least  as  blind  in  insisting  upon  change  as  in  insisting 
upon  permanence.  Surely  such  a  teaching  utterly  unfits 
the  mind  for  the  noble  search  after  an  absolute  truths 
making  it  believe  either  that  there  is  no  such  thing  or 
else  that  it  is  unattainable  by  man.  Sm-ely  it  must  re- 
ject the  whole  idea  of  a  revelation  from  God  to  man. 
Surely  it  must  break  away  the  solid  ground  on  which 
alone  men  can  stand  to  do  their  work  for  God  or  fellow- 
man.  For,  feel  as  we  may  how  blindly  men  have  often 
chosen  their  beliefs,  and  how  ignorantly  they  have  clung 
to  them,  still  we  must  see  that  only  from  the  strong 
footing  of  some  truth  which  they  believed,  and  deemed 
unchangeable,  only  from  the  solid  ground  of  some  clear 
creed,  have  men  done  good  strong  work  in  the  world. 
Strong  action  can  issue  only  from  strong  faith.  Only  out 
of  certainty  comes  power.  I  do  not  think  that  men  con- 
sider how  much  of  all  that  is  dearest  to  them  about  God 
and  themselves  and  fellow-man  they  must  abandon,  un- 
less they  can  believe  that  it  is  possible  and  profitable  to 
come  with  the  best  light  they  have  to  some  conclusion 
which  shall  be  certainty  to  them,  and  then  to  count  that 
settled  ;  to  keep  that  faith  ;  not  to  be  forever  pulling  up 
and  examining  that  root-power  of  their  lives,  but,  with 
the  best  cultivation  they  can  give  it,  to  make  it  blossom 
into  every  grace,  and  ripen  into  every  fruit  of  good  activ- 
ity which  it  is  capable  of  bearing. 

It  is  not  hard,  perhaps,  to  see  whence  comes  the  feeling 
that  we  speak  of.     It  seems  to  me  to  be  aiming  at  this, 


KEEPING   THE   FAITH.  69 

irhicb  men  are  always  in  danger  of  forgetting,  that  any 
truth  large  enough  for  one  to  hold  for  a  lifetime  must 
have  newer  and  richer  sides  to  show  the  fuller-grown  nat- 
ure than  it  could  open  to  the  novice  who  laid  hold  on  it  at 
first.  He  is,  indeed,  unwise,  and  almost  certainly  condemns 
himself  to  stunted  growth,  who  says  that  every  truth  shall 
always  seem  to  him  in  the  future  just  as  it  has  seemed  tc 
him  in  the  past.  If  he  changes,  his  relations  to  the  most 
external  truths  must  alter.  If  he  grows,  the  revelations 
of  God  must  seem  to  him  greater,  seen  from  a  higher 
stand-point.  This  is  the  only  true  conservatism.  Who  ia 
he  that  keeps  most  truly  the  pi'inciples  of  the  fathers  of 
our  national  government,  but  he  who  is  forever  on  the 
watch  to  see  in  what  new  and  unexpected  way  those  prin- 
ciples must  be  applied  to  the  full-grown  republic  which, 
if  our  fathers  saw  at  all,  they  saw  very  far  off  ?  One 
who  thoroughly  holds  the  great  truth  of  the  Trinity 
would  be  sorry  to  think  that  he  should  ever  cease  to  hold 
that  sacred  truth,  but  he  would  be  sorry,  too,  to  think 
that  he  would  always  hold  it  just  as  he  holds  it  now,  and 
that  he  never  would  see  more  deeply  into  its  infinite 
meaning.  He  who  holds  the  truth  of  the  Atonement  is 
sure  that  he  will  always  hold  it,  but  it  will  not  always  be 
as  barren  to  him  as  now  it  sometimes  seems.  Some  day, 
if  he  is  better  and  more  spiritual,  its  holy  mystery  will 
oe  to  him,  not  less  mysterious,  but  infinitely  fuller  of 
spiritual  grace  and  strength  than  it  is  to-day.  This  is  an 
expectation  which  does  much  for  us.  It  lets  progress 
into  our  lives  and  yet  does  not  destroy  their  continuity. 
It  repeats  in  our  mental  and  spiritual  nat:ire8  what  is  so 
beautiful  in  our  bodies,  —  the  harmony  of  constant  growth 
with  unimpaired  identity. 


70  KEEPING   THE   FAITH. 

And  this  is  an  expectation  which  no  mere  line  of  death, 
no  dark  shadow  of  the  grave,  can  limit.  The  "  knowing 
in  part "  which  belongs  to  this  world  passes  on  and  is  ore 
with  the  "  knowing  even  as  also  we  are  known  "  which  it 
to  come  to  us  as  we  stand  for  an  ageless  eternity  before 
the  throne  of  God.  Heaven  is  not  to  sweep  our  truths 
away,  but  only  to  turn  them  till  we  see  their  glory,  to 
open  them  till  we  see  their  truth,  and  to  unveil  our  eyes 
till  for  the  first  time  we  shall  really  see  them.  You  teach 
your  little  child  some  simplest  truth  about  the  Saviour. 
And  the  child  dies  and  goes  to  heaven,  and  knowledge 
comes  into  the  glorified  mind  in  unknown  ways.  God  is 
its  teacher.  Love  is  its  education.  Unguessed  works  for 
the  Father's  glory  develop  and  enrich  it.  It  sees  Christ 
and  learns  more  and  more  of  Him  to  all  eternity,  and  yet 
to  all  eternity  your  child,  looking  back  over  the  richness 
of  the  knowledge  that  has  come,  sees  that  it  all  is  one 
with  that  first  truth  learned  at  your  knee,  and  sums  up  all 
eternity  in  this  one  confession,  this  one  tribute  of  thank- 
fulness to  God,  —  "I  have  kept  the  faith." 

And  now  have  we  not  reached  some  idea  of  the  kind  of 
faith  which  it  is  possible  for  a  man  to  keep  ?  What  sort 
of  a  creed  may  one  hold  and  expect  to  hold  it  always,  live 
in  it,  die  in  it,  and  carry  it  even  to  the  life  beyond  ?  In 
the  first  place,  it  must  be  a  creed  broad  enough  to  allow 
the  man  to  grow  within  it,  to  contain  and  to  supply  his 
ever-developing  mind  and  character.  It  will  not  be  a 
creed  burdened  with  many  details.  It  will  consist  of  large 
truths  and  principles,  capable  of  ever- varying  applications 
to  ever-varying  life.  So  only  can  it  be  clear,  strong,  pos- 
itive, and  yet  leave  the  soul  free  to  grow  within  it,  nay, 
feed  the  soul  richly  and  minister  to  its  growth.    The  men 


KEEPING   THE   FAITH.  71 

of  narrowest  ideas  are  the  most  changeable  or  the  most 
obstinate  of  men  If  their  minds  are  active,  they  are 
changeable,  always  shifting  one  narrow  position  for  an- 
other. If  their  minds  are  sluggish,  they  are  obstinate, 
doggedly  clinging  to  the  splinter  of  truth  on  which  they 
have  been  wrecked.  But  the  true  Christian  believer  says, 
with  David,  "  Thou  hast  set  my  feet  in  a  large  room  ;  " 
and  in  the  large  truth  where  his  Lord  has  put  him,  he 
abides,  finding  abundant  space  to  live  his  life  and  grow 
his  growth. 

And  the  second  characteristic  of  the  faith  that  can  be 
kept  will  be  its  evidence,  its  proved  truth.  It  will  not 
be  a  mere  aggregation  of  chance  opinions.  The  reason 
why  a  great  many  people  seem  to  be  always  changing 
their  faith  is  that  they  never  really  have  any  faith.  They 
have  indeed  what  they  call  a  faith,  and  are  often  very 
positive  about  it.  They  have  gathered  together  a  num- 
ber of  opinions  and  fancies,  often  very  ill-considered, 
which  they  say  that  they  believe,  using  the  deep  and 
sacred  word  for  a  very  superficial  and  frivolous  action  of 
their  wills.  They  no  more  have  a  faith  than  the  city 
vagrant  has  a  home  who  sleeps  upon  a  different  door- 
step every  night.  And  yet  he  does  sleep  somewhere 
every  night ;  and  so  these  wanderers  among  the  creeds  at 
each  given  moment  are  believing  something,  although 
that  something  is  forever  altering.  We  do  not  prop- 
erly believe  what  we  only  think.  A  thousand  specula- 
tions come  into  our  heads,  and  our  minds  dwell  upon 
them,  which  are  not  to  be  therefore  put  into  our  creed, 
however  plausible  they  seem.  Our  creed,  our  credo,  any- 
thing which  we  call  by  such  a  sacred  name,  is  not  what 
vre  have  thought,  but  what  our  Lord  has  told  ua      Tli« 


72  KEEPING   THE   FAITH. 

true  cieed  must  come  down  from  above  and  not  ciut  froa 
within.  Have  your  opinions  always,  but  do  not  bind 
yourself  to  them.  Call  your  opinions  your  creed,  and 
you  will  change  it  every  week.  Make  your  creed  simply 
and  broadly  out  of  the  revelation  of  God,  and  you  mav 
keep  it  to  the  end.  This  is  the  difference  between  the 
hundreds  of  long,  detailed  confessions  of  many  differing 
sects,  overloaded  with  the  minute  speculations  of  gooa 
men,  which  take  in  and  dismiss  their  believers  like  the 
nightly  lodgers  of  an  eastern  caravansary,  and  the  short 
scriptural  creed  of  the  church  universal,  into  which  souls 
come  seeking  rest  and  strength,  and  live  in  it  as  in  a 
home,  and  go  no  more  out  forever. 

And  then  the  third  quality  of  a  creed  that  a  man  may 
keep  up  to  the  end  is  that  it  is  a  creed  capable  of  being 
turned  into  action.  A  mere  speculation,  however  true  it 
be,  I  think  you  never  can  be  sure  that  the  mind  will  hold. 
The  faith  which  you  keep  must  be  a  faith  that  demands 
obedience,  and  you  can  keep  it  only  by  obeying  it.  Are 
not  both  of  these  true  ?  Those  parts  of  religion  which  are 
purely  speculative,  if  indeed  such  mere  speculation  is  part 
of  religion  at  all,  are  the  parts  in  which  men  most  often 
and  most  easily  change.  A  hundred  men  change  their 
views  of  abstract  truth  for  one  who  alters  his  conviction 
of  practical  duty.  The  one  may  be  changed  and  nothing 
suffers  ;  a  change  in  the  other  alters  the  whole  life. 

Look  at  two  men  holding  the  same  truth,  —  the  truth 
of  the  Trinity,  for  instance.  To  one  it  presents  itself 
j^lways  as  a  doctrine  to  be  learned,  to  the  other  as  a  law 
to  be  obeyed.  One's  view  of  it  is  always  theoretical,  the 
other's  always  practical.  They  both  believe  it,  but  one 
SLdserts  it,  demonstrates  it,  reasons  about  it.     The  othei 


BEEPING   THE  FAITH.  73 

lit  ee  by  it.  Which  is  the  true  believer  ?  I  can  conceive  of 
the  first  man  losing  his  belief  and  yet  going  on  much  the 
same.  Convince  him  with  a  specious  argument  and  he 
will  let  it  drop,  and,  except  that  he  talks  of  it  ro  longer, 
nobody  will  know  the  difference.  But  take  the  truth  of 
the  Divine  Father,  the  Divine  Saviour,  the  Divine  Com- 
forter, out  of  the  other's  life,  and  all  is  gone.  Duty  nc 
longer  has  a  zest,  nor  prayer  an  object,  nor  grief  a  con- 
solation. The  whole  life  falls  to  pieces  when  its  truth  is 
gone.  Is  not  this  last  the  man  who  will  keep  the  faith  ? 
Practical  obedience  is  the  "  deepness  of  earth "  of  the 
Lord's  parable  in  which  the  sower's  seed  is  caught  and 
rooted,  and  held  fast,  and  saved  from  the  fowls  of  the 
wayside  and  the  scorching  sun  of  the  stony  places. 

Breadth,  Positive  Evidence,  Practicalness,  —  these, 
then,  must  be  the  characteristics  of  the  creed  which  a 
man  expects  to  live  in  and  die  in. 

I  have  spoken,  in  illustration  of  what  I  have  been  say- 
ing, about  the  truth  of  the  Trinity.  Do  you  remembei 
the  Collect  which  our  Church  has  appointed  for  Trinit^y 
Sunday  ?  It  bears  upon  our  subject.  "  Almighty  and 
Everlasting  God,"  it  prays,  "  who  hast  given  unto  us  Thy 
servants  grace,  by  the  confession  of  a  true  faith,  to  ac- 
knowledge the  glory  of  the  eternal  Trinity,  and  in  the 
power  of  the  divine  Majesty  to  worship  the  Unity;  we  be- 
seech Thee  that  Thou  wouldest  keep  us  steadfast  in  this 
faith,  and  evermore  defend  us  from  all  adversities,  who 
livest  and  reignest,  one  God,  world  without  end.  Amen." 
Now  what  does  that  Collect  pray  for  with  its  solemn  and 
sonorous  words  ?  Does  it  simply  ask  God  to  make  ua 
obstinate  and  firm  ?  Does  it  implore  Him  to  keep  away 
from  our  feeble  reasons  anj^  strong  arguments   hat  might 


74  KEEPING   THE   FAITH. 

convince  us  that  the  doctrine  of  the  Trinity  is  not  true  ? 
Is  it  the  cry  of  cowardice,  or  of  self-indulgent  indolence 
that  dreads  to  be  disturbed  ?  I  think  our  study  must 
have  taught  us  something  more  than  this.  He  who  prays 
for  an  end  prays  for  the  necessary  means.  He  who 
prays  for  the  preservation  of  his  faith  in  the  Trinity 
prays  that  his  faith  in  the  Trinity  may  be  such  that  it 
can  be  preserved.  Then  comes  in  all  that  we  nave  said. 
He  prays  that  his  faith  in  the  Trinity  may  be  broad, 
not  full  of  minute  definitions  of  the  method  of  the  divine 
existence,  which  are  impertinent  and  irreverent,  and  may 
prove  untenable,  but  simply  resting  on  the  great  fact  of 
the  divinity  of  Father,  Son,  and  Spirit,  which  shall  grow- 
clearer  and  richer  to  him  as  he  grows  stronger  under  it. 
He  prays  that  his  Faith  in  the  Trinity  may  have  positive 
evidence,  that  it  may  rest  on  God's  Word  and  not  on  his 
own  opinion,  and  so  again  that  all  mere  theories  about 
it,  which  are  only  his  own  opinion,  may  be  separated 
from  the  substance  of  his  faith.  He  prays  that  his  faith 
in  the  Trinity  may  be  practical,  continually  making  him 
strong  and  active  in  the  manifold  live  duties  that  fill  all 
his  life.  He  prays  for  largeness  of  thought,  for  honesty 
and  thoroughness  of  purpose,  for  earnestness  of  work, 
when  he  prays  that  God  will  keep  him  steadfast  in  the 
faith  of  the  eternal  Trinity.  It  is  surely  a  prayer  for 
man  to  pray  and  for  God  to  hear. 

Or  take  the  constant  exhortations  that  are  made  to 
people  from  the  Christian  pulpits  to  hold  fast  their  faith. 
What  do  they  mean  ?  Are  they  mere  pleas  for  ob- 
stinacy ?  Do  they  beg  the  people  to  close  their  ears  to 
argument,  to  keep  out  of  the  way  of  light,  to  dread  and 
run  away  from  the  honest  man  who  comes  to  meet  them 


KEEPING   THE  FAITH.  T!) 

with  a  faith  different  from  theirs,  for  fear  that  they 
should  be  converted  and  lose  the  faith  of  theii  fathers? 
Are  thousands  of  ministers  preaching  doctrinal  discourses 
this  Sunday  morning,  —  Romanist,  Baptist,  Methodist, 
Unitarian,  Episcopalian,  —  each  preaching  to  his  own  con- 
gregation and  begging  them  at  all  hazards  to  hold  fast 
their  faith,  each  busy  building  the  fences  of  his  sheep-fold 
a  little  higher  and  warning  his  flock  of  the  danger  of  look- 
ing over  ?  That  were  pitiful  enough.  I  would,  indeed, 
that  ministers  and  people  both  understood  what  kind  of 
faith  alone  it  is  that  can  be  kept.  He  who  exhorts  to  an 
end  exhorts  to  the  necessary  means.  He  who  exhorts 
men  to  keep  their  faith  exhorts  them  to  make  their  faith 
broad,  solid,  practical,  so  that  it  can  be  kept.  Of  that 
exhortation  there  cannot  be  too  much.  Let  all  ministers 
utter  that  exhortation  and  all  people  hear  it,  and  speedily 
the  "  Holy  Catholic  Church,  the  Communion  of  Saints," 
which  we  believe  in,  must  be  seen  grandly  issuing  from 
this  tumult  of  conflicting  sects  as  out  of  a  multitude  of 
narrow,  shallow,  brawling  mountain-streams  issues  by 
and  by  the  broad,  deep,  and  effective  river.  This  is  what 
we  really  preach,  or  ought  to.  This  is  what  I  preach  to 
you  to-day.  Not,  "  Be  obstinate,  be  quarrelsome,  be 
fighters  for  your  faith,"'  but,  "  Be  wide,  be  thorough,  be 
workers  in  your  faith,  and  so  keep  it  to  the  end." 

How  clear  it  is,  then,  that  St.  Paul's  words  may  mean 
very  differently  in  the  mouths  of  different  men.  When 
you  find  a  man  of  eighty  professing  to  believe  still  what 
he  believed  at  twenty,  it  may  signify  something  very  bad 
or  very  good.  It  may  mean  death  or  life.  It  may  mean 
that  long  ago  he  gave  up  thinking  and  studying  and 
feeling,  and  is  going  along  through  life,  and  by  and  by 


76  KEEPING  THE   FAITH. 

is  going  out  of  life,  to  God,  with  nothing  but  an  olo 
withered  handful  of  grass  and  flowers,  dead  long  since, 
which  he  still  thinks  precious,  because  they  were  fresh 
and  live  when  he  picked  them  sixty  years  ago.  But  he 
has  held  them  in  his  hands  instead  of  planting  them  into 
his  life,  and  they  are  dead.  He  goes,  saying,  "  I  have 
kept  the  faith  ; "  but  he  has  no  more  kept  it  than  the 
tomb  that  keeps  the  body  keeps  the  man.  But  there  is 
another  old  man  who  believes  still  his  boyhood's  creed. 
The  things  that  were  so  dear  to  him  at  first  have  grown 
dearer,  year  by  year.  The  joy  and  grief  of  life,  like  sun- 
shine and  rain,  have  worked  together  to  ripen  the  well 
planted  field.  He  said  the  creed  this  morning,  and  it 
was  truer  to  him  than  on  the  day  when  he  was  confirmed. 
All  life  has  illustrated  it,  and  now  as  death  draws  near 
he  sees  how  through  death's  window  eternity  casts  into 
it  light  and  meaning  that  it  never  had  before.  He  will 
go,  saying,  "  I  have  kept  the  faith,"  and  hold  it  up  really 
still  green  and  vigorous  before  God  ;  and  as  God  takes 
it  and  plants  it  in  the  richer  soil  of  the  eternal  life 
His  words  of  benediction  will  descend,  "  Well  done,  good 
and  faithful  servant ;  thou  hast  been  faithful  in  these  few 
things,  enter  into  my  joy,  and  keep  thy  faith  there  still 
forever."  Such  be  our  constant  saying  of  our  creed,  our 
steadfast  keeping  of  the  faith. 

I  said,  when  I  began,  that  this  meaning  of  the  term, 
the  faith,  which  made  it  signify  a  certain  scheme  of 
doctrine,  was  only  a  part  of  the  meaning  of  St.  Paul.  I 
meant  to  speak  of  the  other  meaning,  which  I  am  not 
Bure  was  not  more  prominent  in  his  mind,  the  personal 
loyalty  to  Christ  which  had  been  the  joy  and  law  and 
insDiralion  of  his  life.     But  I  have  dwelt  so  long  upoi 


KEEFHTG   THE  FJOTH.  77 

the  first  meaning  that  I  have  left  no  time  for  the  other 
I  can  only  suggest  it  to  you,  and  I  ought  not  to  omit  it 
altogether.  When  Paul  the  aged  said,  "  T  have  kept  the 
faith,"  he  was  remembering  how,  from  the  time  his  Mas 
ter  called  him,  he  had  served  that  ^Master  all  his  days. 
As  he  wrote  it  he  must  have  seen  Damascus  and  the  open 
sky  again.  The  voice  of  Jesus  must  have  been  once  more 
in  his  ears.  From  that  time  on  he  had  served  and  loved 
his  Lord.  "  What  wilt  Thou  have  me  to  do  ?  "  had  been 
the  question  of  all  his  life. 

His  faith  in  Christ  he  had  kept  only  by  obedience  to 
Christ.  If  it  is  impossible,  as  we  have  said,  to  keep  a 
conviction,  still  more  is  it  impossible  to  keep  a  feeling,  a 
personal  devotion,  without  setting  it  into  action.  You 
can  keep  a  faith  only  as  you  keep  a  plant,  by  rooting  it 
into  your  life  and  making  it  grow  there.  So  it  under- 
goes the  changes  that  belong  to  growth  and  yet  continues 
still  the  same.  But  this  meaning  of  our  text  I  can  only 
point  out  to-day,  and  at  some  other  time  we  may  deal 
with  it  more  fully. 

It  was  a  noble  end  certainly.  Men  lose  their  love  and 
trust  and  hope,  as  they  grow  old.  Here  was  a  man  who 
kept  them  all  fresh  to  the  last.  Men  cease  to  have  strong 
convictions,  and  grow  cynical  or  careless.  Here  was  a 
man  who  believed  more,  and  not  less,  as  he  knew  more 
of  God,  and  of  himself,  and  of  the  world.  His  old  age  did 
not  come  creeping  into  port,  a  wreck,  with  broken  masta 
and  rudder  gone,  but  full-sailed  still,  and  strong  for  other 
voyages  in  other  seas.  We  are  sure  that  his  was  the  old 
age  God  loves  to  see ;  that  the  careless  and  the  hope- 
less and  the  faithless  are  the  failures.  To  such  men  a* 
Paul  alone  is  God's  promise  to  David  fulfilled :  "  Witi 
Ions:  life  will  T  satisfy  him  Hnd  show  him  mv  sp.lvatinn.'" 


V. 

THE   SOUL'S  REFUGE  IN  GOD. 

"Thoa  shalt  hide  them  in  the  secret  of  thy  presence  from  the  pride  ol 
*iian.  Thou  shalt  keep  them  secrelly  in  a  pavilion  from  the  iitrife  of 
tongues."  —  Psalm  xxxi.  20. 

These  are  great  words  surely.  They  are  an  expres- 
sion of  David's  confidence  in  God's  power  and  will  to 
hide  His  people  in  Himself.  They  are  a  promise  of  per- 
fect security  in  God  for  the  man  who  fears  and  trusts 
in  Him.  He  is  to  be  hid  from  "  the  pride  of  men,"  and 
from  "  the  strife  of  tongues."  I  suppose  that  by  these 
phrases  we  may  understand  the  whole  of  that  cruel  and 
disturbing  interference  of  one  man's  life  with  another's, 
which  may  take  such  an  endless  variety  of  forms.  As 
it  troubled  David,  it  took  the  form  of  violent  opposition, 
of  malignant  persecution ;  but  it  would  limit  our  Bible 
far  too  much,  if  we  thought  that  that  was  the  only  form 
of  man's  inhumanity  to  man  from  which  it  was  promised 
that  man  might  find  refuge  in  his  God.  "  From  the 
pride  of  man,"  David  says.  Whenever  the  arrogance  and 
selfishness  of  one  man  crowds  and  tramples  upon  the 
rights  or  the  growth  of  another ;  whenever  one  man's  des- 
potic nature  overrides  the  people  about  him  and  seems  to 
leave  them  no  chance,  the  crowded  and  wronged  nature 
may  flee  to  God  and  find  a  refuge  there.  And  "  th« 
strife  if  tongues"  —  whenever  tte  mere  turmoil  and  con 


THE  SOUL'S   REFUGE  IN  GOD.  79 

tusion  of  the  world  become  intolerable  ;  whenever  a  i>«an'a 
own  personal  life  and  conscience  are  being  swamped  and 
lost  in  the  ocean  of  debate  and  quarrel,  for  him,  too,  the 
life  of  God  is  open,  and  he  may  go  and  hide  himself  there 
and  be  safe  from  it  all.  It  is  a  great  promise,  for  as  we 
go  on  in  life  are  we  not  often  conscious  that  instead  of 
getting  the  best  out  of  our  fellow-men  we  are  really  get- 
ting the  worst  ?  Instead  of  the  continual  activity  of  their 
life  around  us  feeding  our  life  and  nourishing  it  with  its 
own  vitality,  this  tumult  of  living,  this  strife  of  tongues, 
is  always  drowning  and  deadening  and  dissipating  our 
personal  faith  and  character  and  peace.  Again  I  say,  the 
form  of  the  intrusion,  the  invasion  of  our  lives,  differs 
continually.  VVe  need  not  wait  till  some  Saul  is  hunting 
us  up  and  down  the  land  before  we  take  the  Psalm  of 
David  to  ourselves.  To  him  it  represented  daily  per- 
plexity and  fear.  He  was  always  insulted  and  in  dan- 
ger. He  was  always  watching  from  the  hill-tops  to  see 
whether  his  enemy  was  in  sight.  He  was  always  listen- 
ing to  hear  the  voices  of  his  enemies  borne  on  the  wind, 
and  running  like  a  frightened  deer  to  hide  himself  in 
some  dark  ravine.  We  know  nothing  of  all  that.  Our 
life  is  peaceable  enough ;  but  yet  everywhere  there  is  the 
arrogant  presence  of  the  pride  of  man,  and  the  disturbing 
tumult  of  the  strife  of  tongues.  The  abuse  and  fault- 
finding and  frivolousness,  the  foolish  quarrellings,  this 
everlasting  touching  of  one  life  upon  another,  this  pat- 
ting up  of  artificial  standards  and  then  watching  to  see 
how  everybody  meets  them,  this  continual  criticising  and 
keeping  account  of  another's  conduct,  all  this  waste  of 
force  and  time  that  comes  of  the  perfectly  unmeaning 
strifes  of  social  ambition,  of  business  rivalry,  of  foolish 


80  THE  SOUL'S  REFUGE  IN  GOD. 

Bensitiveness,  into  which  we  throw  all  our  soul,  and  which 
is  always  tossing  about  in  distress,  and  trying  to  drown 
the  soul  that  we  throw  into  it,  —  from  these  we  need  a 
refuge  as  strong  as  David  needed  from  his  enemiea. 
Who  of  us  can  look  back  over  his  life  and  not  feel  that 
in  some  form  or  other  these  words,  "  the  pride  of  man 
and  the  strife  of  tongues,"  describe  forces  which  have 
been  disturbing  and  hindering  the  peace  and  growth  of 
his  own  character  and  life?  Of  how  much  of  our  best 
society  they  seem  to  be  the  exact  description  ;  of  how 
many  heartless  houses  filled  with  a  poor  pretence  of  so- 
cial life,  David's  words  tell  the  whole  story.  "  The  pride 
of  man  and  the  strife  of  tongues,"  the  lack  of  humility, 
the  lack  of  love,  the  lack  of  peace  !  To  live  in  such  a 
world,  and  yet  to  keep  a  soul  in  us  at  all,  is  very  hard. 
We  must  have  something  under  and  beyond  such  a  world 
to  flee  to  to  renew  our  life,  to  really  recreate  ourselves. 
That  security  and  recreation  of  our  life  cannot  come  ex- 
cept in  the  source  from  which  our  life  first  came.  We 
must  go  back  to  God.  Let  us  speak  to-day  of  this  resort 
of  the  human  soul  to  God  when  it  feels  its  danger  of  be* 
ing  swamped  and  lost  in  the  tumult  of  the  world  and  the 
strife  of  tongues.  The  secrecy  and  safety  of  the  life  oj 
the  believer  who  is  kept  in  God. 

But  first,  before  we  speak  of  the  refuge  which  God 
offers,  let  us  see  what  man  tries  to  do  for  himself.  There 
are  two  different  attitudes  which  almost  all  men  takd 
towards  this  tendency  of  the  life  about  us  to  8wallo"w 
up  and  drown  our  personality.  It  is  strange  to  see  how 
"■oDg  before  they  come  to  middle  age,  almost  all  men,  ex 
cept  the  lowest  and  the  highest,  ftU  men  of  strong  char- 
acter who  have  not  reached  some  religious  conception  oi 


THE   SOUL'S  REFUGE   IN   GOD.  81 

their  true  relations  to  the  world,  have  either  become  de- 
fiant of  the  world,  setting  themselves  in  obtrusive  iude 
pendence  against  its  claims,  or  else  have  tried  in  soma 
way  to  withdraw  themselves  from  it  and  let  the  world 
go  its  way,  determined  that  they  will  not  be  sacrificed 
to  its  importunate  demand.  Surely  we  know  both  kinds 
of  men.  One  man,  seeing  how  the  conventionalities  of 
society  and  the  tumult  of  the  world  are  always  trying  to 
break  him  down,  to  compel  him  to  fall  into  the  mill  of 
its  routine,  and  to  crush  his  personal  chara^.ter  between 
its  wheels,  rebels,  defies  the  world,  becomes  some  kind  of 
social  outlaw,  and  does  outrageous  things  to  show  that  he 
will  not  be  crushed,  that  he  keeps,  and  means  to  keep,  his 
independence  and  originality  unbroken.  Another  man, 
equally  weary  and  impatient  with  the  world's  endeavors 
to  absorb  him,  draws  himself  back,  shuts  himself  in,  at- 
tempts some  of  those  forms  of  hermit  life  which  our  civ- 
ilization still  leaves  possible,  and  affects  to  give  up  all 
relations  to  a  world  whose  life  seems  to  him  all  emptiness 
and  noise.  We  have  all  seen  both  kinds  of  men.  Nay, 
who  of  us  has  not  felt  in  himself  the  temptation  to  do 
both  these  things  at  different  moments  of  his  life.  The 
impulse  to  be  defiant  and  the  impulse  to  withdraw  our- 
selves, both  come  to  us  in  different  moods.  We  will  dare 
the  world  to  its  face  and  tell  it  to  do  its  worst,  for  we  ar« 
not  afraid  of  it  with  all  its  wretched  prescriptions,  and 
false  standards,  and  endless  clatter  of  gossiping  criticism. 
That  is  one  spirit.  We  will  let  the  world  go  its  way, 
and  we  will  go  ours.  We  will  live  a  life  of  our  own  out- 
side of  the  quarrels  and  contentions  of  men.  That  ia  tha 
otli^ar  gpirlt.  *^e  laiow  tnem  Dotn,  ari  Tre  Know  that 
xth  are  bad.    W»  Vww  ^v^t  the  first  make^  a  man  hard 


82  THE  SOUL'S  REFUGE  IN  GOD. 

and  brutal,  and  the  second  makes  a  man  sefish  and  self- 
conceited.  We  know  good  human  material  that  has  been 
ruined  in  each  of  these  two  ways,  and  so  we  want  to  beg 
any  young  man  who  seems  to  be  getting  into  the  power 
of  either  spirit,  to  stop  and  see  if  there  is  not  something 
better  than  either  ,  some  nobler  refuge  than  himself  from 
"  the  pride  of  man  and  the  strife  of  tongues." 

It  is  good  to  see  how  God  comes  and  offers  Himself, 
just  here,  to  the  human  soul.  We  do  not  see  yet  how 
He  can  help  us,  but  instinctively  we  are  sure  that  if  He 
really  is  God,  He  must  have  some  help  to  give  us  here. 
He  says,  "  In  the  secret  of  my  Presence  I  will  hide  you." 
Ha^e  you  not  seen  often  how  jealous  a  father  can  be  of 
the  privileges  of  his  own  love  ?  Would  not  any  of  you  be 
angry  if  a  child  of  yours  went  about  asking  other  people 
for  the  bread  which  it  was  your  place  to  provide  for  him, 
begging  at  other  men's  doors  when  your  table  was  spread 
with  his  dinner  ?  That  is  just  the  feeling  with  which,  all 
through  the  Bible,  God  is  always  chiding  men  for  going 
to  others  to  ask,  or  for  seeking  in  themselves  that  refuge 
and  peace  which  it  is  the  prerogative  of  His  Fatherhood 
to  bestow.  It  is  one  of  the  most  touching  presentations 
of  the  Deity.  It  is  the  one  which  Christ,  the  God  incar- 
nate, made  most  manifest.  "  How  can  you,  my  children, 
be  in  trouble  and  want,"  He  says,  "  and  not  first  of  all, 
Instantly,  turn  to  your  Father  ?  "  "  Ye  will  not  come 
to  me  that  ye  might  have  life.''  It  appeals  to  us  very 
closely  when  we  leavn  tbat  God  is  even  more  jealous  of 
His  love  than  of  His  honor. 

Christianity  is  the  bringing  of  God  to  man,  and  of 
man  to  God.  We  shall  go  on  then,  after  these  general 
suggestions,   to    see   how  it  is    that   in  Christianity  the 


THE   SOUL'S  REFUGE  IN  GOD.  88 

refuge  of  God  is  thrown  wide  open  to  men  who  are  tired 
with,  and  who  feel  the  danger  of  the  world.  Thousands 
of  Christians  have  found  the  refuge  who  never  asked  the 
question,  who  simply  were  drawn  into  the  open  door  by 
irresistible  attraction ;  but  if  we  can  see  how  it  is  that 
Christianity  gives  us  what  we  want  it  will  make  it  more 
real,  and  so  more  useful  to  us.  I  think  there  is  a  three- 
fold answer  to  our  question.  I  think  that  the  release  and 
refuge  of  Christianity  consists  in  the  way  it  brings  the 
soul  first  into  communion  with  God,  second  into  con- 
sciousness of  itself,  and  third  into  a  just  value  of  the 
world.     Let  us  look  at  each  of  these. 

1.  We  will  try  first  to  understand  how  the  soul  finds 
refuge  in  communion  with  God.  Of  all  the  deep  phrases 
in  the  Bible,  where  can  we  find  one  deeper  or  more 
beautiful  than  this  of  David  in  my  text,  "  Thou  wilt 
keep  him  in  the  secret  of  thy  presence."  The  very 
words  are  full  of  peace  before  we  hardly  touch  them  to 
open  their  meaning.  But  their  meaning  is  deeper  the 
more  we  study  it.  They  mean  that  when  a  man  is  spirit- 
ually conscious  of  the  presence  of  God  it  secludes  and 
separates  him  from  every  other  presence.  Can  we  un- 
derstand that  ?  You  go  into  a  room  full  of  people,  and 
the  tumult  of  tongues  is  all  about  you.  You  are  bewil- 
dered and  distracted.  In  the  ordinary  language  of  society, 
which  sometimes  hits  the  truth  of  its  own  condition  right- 
ly, you  "  feel  lost."  You  lose  yourself  in  the  presence  of 
BO  many  people.  They  all  seem  to  take  hold  of  you,  and 
claim  some  part  of  you,  whether  they  speak  to  you  or 
not.  You  are  lost  in  the  crowd.  You  are  merely  part  of 
the  tumult.  But  by  and  by  you  meet  your  best  friend 
there;  somebody  whose  life  is  your  life  ;  somebody  whom 


84  THE   SOUL'S  REFUGE  IN  GOD. 

you  sincorely  love  and  trust ;  somebody  who  thoroughly 
satisfies  you,  and,  by  the  contact  of  his  nature,  make* 
your  taste  and  brain  and  heart  and  conscience  work  at 
their  very  best.  As  you  draw  near  to  him  it  seems  as  if 
you  drew  away  from  all  the  other  people.  As  he  take* 
hold  of  you,  he  seems  to  claim  you  and  they  let  you 
go.  The  worry  and  vexation  of  the  crowd  sink  away 
as  he  begins  to  talk  with  you,  and  you  understand  ony 
another.  By  and  by  you  have  forgotten  that  all  those 
other  men  are  talking  around  you.  You  have  escaped 
from  the  strife  of  tongues.  You  are  absorbed  in  him. 
He  has  hid  you  in  the  secret  of  his  presence.  Sup- 
pose that  St.  John  should  come  and  talk  with  you,  or 
be  at  your  side  without  a  word  in  the  midst  of  the  wild- 
est of  our  social  Babels.  Would  he  not  bring  his  peace 
with  him  ?  Would  you  not  let  every  one  else  go,  and 
be  alone  with  him,  even  in  all  the  crowd  ?  Would  he  not 
hide  you  in  the  secret  of  his  presence  ?  And  now  if  it  is 
possible,  instead  of  your  best  friend,  instead  of  the  great 
disciple,  for  God  Himself  to  be  with  you,  so  that  His 
presence  is  real,  so  that  He  lets  you  understand  His 
thoughts  and  lets  you  know  that  He  understands  yours, 
80  that  there  is  a  true  sympathy  between  you  and 
Him,  if  mere  vision  and  hearing  are  not  necessary  to 
the  Divine  company,  and  as  close  to  you  —  nay,  infi^ 
nitely  closer  —  than  the  men  who  crowd  you  round,  and 
whose  voices  are  in  your  ears,  the  unseen  God  is  truly 
with  you,  what  then?  Can  any  tumult  of  those  meD 
distress  you?  Can  their  unfairness  anger  you?  You 
hear  them  blaming  you;  you  hear  them  praising  you 
Does  either  make  a  tumult  in  your  soul  ?  They  ask  yott 
flippant  questions  ;  they  give  you  flippant  advice.     Doe> 


THE  SOUL'S  EEFUGE  IN  QOD.  86 

either  distress  you?  You  are  with  them,  and  yet  you 
are  alone  with  Him.  They  parade  their  foolish  vanities 
before  you,  and  you  hardly  see  them.  It  is  as  if  a  bright 
fly  fluttered  its  impertinent  finery  between  you  and  the 
west,  when  you  were  looking  at  a  gorgeous  sunset.  Ho 
baa  blinded  you  to  all  oesides  Himself.  He  has  "hid 
you  in  the  secret  of  His  presence  from  the  pride  of 
men." 

This  gives  the  very  simplest  notion  of  the  meaning. 
Now  we  suppose  that  this  becomes  habitual,  the  constant 
temper  and  condition  of  a  life.  We  suppose  this  friendly 
meeting  with  one  who  interests  you  thoroughly  to  pass 
into  a  friendship,  pure,  continual,  devoted.  If  not  in 
bodily  presence,  still  in  thought  and  sympathy,  our  friend 
is  always  with  us.  We  always  judge  ourselves  by  his 
standard.  We  think  what  he  would  like  or  what  he 
would  condemn ;  we  appeal  even  in  his  absence  to  his 
approbation.  Is  not  the  protection  which  we  saw  given 
to  a  man  by  his  friend's  company  for  an  hour  while  they 
ialked  together,  extended  now  over  all  his  life.  He  has 
always  a  refuge  from  the  cavils  and  fault-findings,  the 
ridicule  and  misunderstanding  of  his  fellows.  There  is 
one  who  understands  him  and  who  does  not  laugh  at 
him.  There  is  one  whom  if  he  pleases  and  satisfies,  the 
rest  may  go  their  way.  Across  his  life  now  may  blow 
the  most  cruel  winds  of  slander  and  they  cannot  touch 
him.  His  friend  has  hid  him  in  the  secret  of  his  unseen 
presence,  and  there  he  grows  up  into  fearlessness  and 
oonscientiousness  and  peace.  This  is  the  separating  and 
aberating  power  of  a  truly  great  friendship.  Happy  is 
the  young  man  to  whom  it  is  givt-n  early  in  life  !  happy 
because  of  the  safety  and  growth  which  it  brings  to  him 


86  THE   SOUL'S   REFUGE  IK  GOD. 

happy  because  of  the  manifold  petty  slaveries  from 
which  it  frees  him.  The  most  perfect  picture  of  such  a 
hiding  of  one  being  in  the  presence  of  another  is  in  the 
serenity  of  a  child's  life,  held  and  comprehended,  as  it 
were,  in  the  father's.  How  fearless  a  child  is.  How  h( 
goes  among  men  looking  them  bravely  in  the  face  as  ii 
they  could  not  harm  him,  so  easily  superior  to  the  anxi- 
eties which  are  fretting  away  their  lives.  It  is  because 
his  life  rests  so  completely  on  his  father's  life  that  he 
is  able  to  be  so  supremely  independent  of  other  people. 
The  orphan  child  is  timid  and  distrustful  and  servile. 
He  has  no  anchor,  and  so  every  wave  is  a  thing  to  fear 
and  he  runs  before  it.  His  poor  little  unprotected  life  is 
exposed  without  the  blessed  hiding  of  the  secret  of  that 
presence  which  God  mercifully  closes  around  almost  every 
life  that  it  may  grow  its  earliest  growth  in  peace. 

Do  not  these  illustrations,  then,  at  least  suggest,  —  for 
it  is  almost  impossible  to  tell  many  of  the  highest  things 
except  by  mere  suggestion,  —  do  they  not  suggest  how 
that  which  we  saw  occasional  in  the  Christian's  life  may 
there,  too,  become  constant,  and  a  man  live  in  such  con- 
tinual consciousness  of  God,  such  a  constant  desire  to 
lease  Him,  such  a  constant  study  of  what  will  please 
Him  :  in  a  word,  how  a  man  may  live  so  continually  in 
God's  presence  that  the  presences  of  other  men  may  be 
shut  out,  their  vexing  voices  may  not  vex  him  ?  right  in 
the  midst  of  all  the  strife  of  voices  there  may  be  perfect 
peace  with  him.  There  is  something  very  striking  in 
seeing  how  this  same  feeling  has  attached  to  the  event 
of  these  Christmas  Days,  the  coming  of  God  into  the 
world's  life  when  Christ  was  bom.  What  is  the  whole 
idea  of  peace  that  is  so  clearly  associated  with  that  event 


THE  SOUL'S  REFUGE  IN   GOD.  81 

trom  the  time  that  the  angels  sang  of  il  to  the  shepheixis  . 
Is  it  not  this  same  thought  of  the  absorption  of  all  the 
world  in  its  present  God  ?  Is  it  not  the  promise  thrtt 
when  that  presence  shall  be  perfectly,  spiritually,  realized, 
men  shall  be  so  taken  up  in  serving  Him  that  they  shall 
hare  no  time  or  wish  to  fight  with  one  another  ?  and  in 
the  farthest  distance  we  can  see  no  other  hope  of  uni 
versal  peace  but  that.  This  is  the  spiritual  truth  which 
lay  at  the  bottom  of  that  old  idea,  which  is  not  wanting 
either  in  historical  truth,  the  idea  that  at  the  time  of 
the  nativity  there  was  a  wonderfully  wide-spread  peace 
throughout  the  world,  and  that  the  Temple  of  War  was 
shut.     This  is  what  Milton  sings  so  splendidly  :  — 

"  No  war  or  battle's  sound 
Was  heard  the  world  around, 
The  idle  spear  and  shield  were  high  up  hung , 
The  hooked  chariot  stood 
Unstained  with  hostile  blood, 
The  trumpet  spake  not  to  the  armed  throng , 
And  kings  sate  still  with  awful  eye 
As  if  they  surely  knew  their  sovereign  Lord  was  nigh." 

It  was  the  typical  and  prophetic  keeping  of  the  world 
secretly  in  God's  pavilion  from  the  strife  of  tongues. 

When  we  seek  for  individual  illustrations  of  what  we 
are  describing,  I  think  we  understand  it  perfectly  by 
looking  at  our  Lord's  apostles.  Those  men  who  left 
their  boats  to  follow  Him  must  have  heard  many  an 
angry  and  scornful  word  in  their  old  haunts,  along  the 
itreeta  of  Bethsaida,  and  among  the  boatmen  on  the 
Lake,  many  a  flippant  discussion  of  their  Master's 
character,  many  a  contemptuous  comment  on  their  own 
delusion.  Can  you  conceive  of  their  minding  it  as  they 
walked  with  Jesus  ?     He  hid  th«m  trom  it  in  the  secret 


88  THE  SOUL'S  REFUGE  IN  GOD. 

of  His  presence.  Noi  merely  at  the  last  when  He  cam« 
in  upon  them  where  the  door  was  shut,  and  held  out  His 
scarred  hands  in  benediction.  Not  only  then,  but  during 
all  His  life  with  them.  He  really  had  been  saying,  "  My 
peace  I  give  unto  you."  We  cannot  picture  to  ourselves 
those  first  disciples  living  in  Christ's  presence  and  yet 
forever  vexed  and  worried  at  the  foolish  things  men 
said  about  Him.  But  with  us  modern  disci^jles  how 
different  it  is.  We  too  believe  in  Jesus  and  try  to  live 
with  Him.  How  is  it  that  a  flippant  toss  of  skeptical 
smartness  about  Him,  or  a  sneer  at  our  folly  in  making 
Him  our  Master,  lays  hold  of  and  stings  us  so,  sends  us 
home  anxious,  puzzled,  and  worried  ?  We  are  not  wholly 
hidden  from  the  strife  of  tongues.  It  must  be  that  we 
are  not  completely  in  the  secret  of  His  presence.  We 
are  not  there  constantly  enough.  There  are  moments, 
times  when  we  are  praying,  times  when  in  sorrow  His 
sympathy  is  like  life  to  us,  when  there  is  not  the  tongue 
so  rude  and  bitter  that  it  could  ruffle  the  rest  of  our  souls 
in  Him ;  times  when  nothing  that  man  could  say  would 
frighten  or  depress  us.  At  such  times  we  learn  what  it 
is  to  be  thoroughly  with  Him,  and  understand  what  a 
guarded  and  safe  life  it  must  be  to  be  hidden  there 
always.  Such  times  are  like  the  Transfiguration,  and  we 
feel  as  Simon  Peter  felt. 

2.  This,  then,  is  the  directest  meaning  of  our  text.  We 
have  all  sometimes  felt,  I  think,  a  sense  of  safety  and 
Beclusion,  as  if  a  great  thick  door  shut  oetween  us  and 
the  ordinary  frets  and  misunderstandings  of  our  life, 
when  we  appealed  to  the  secret  knowledge  of  one  an 
other  that  lay  between  our  soul  and  God's  in  those  great 
words  of  our  Communion  Collect :  "  Almighty  God,  unto 


THE   SOUL'S   REFUGE   IN   GOD.  8*> 

whom  all  hearts  are  open,  all  desires  known,  and  from 
whom  no  secrets  are  hid."  We  have  felt,  when  we  said 
those  words,  as  Noah  must  have  felt  when,  in  the  phrase 
of  Genesis,  God  "  shut  him  in  "  to  the  Ark,  and  he  heard 
tJ^e  deluge  roaring  outside  and  was  safe.  This  is  what 
1  wanted  especiall}'^  to  speak  of,  but  I  mentioned  two 
other  elements  in  the  work  which  <^hristianity  does  to 
secure  the  safety  of  the  soul  from  the  pride  of  man  and 
the  strife  of  tongues,  besides  this  great  work  of  making 
God  more  real,  more  really  present  to  it.  One  of  these 
was  the  work  of  a  true  Christian  faith  in  developing 
and  strengthening  individuality  in  each  of  us.  The 
reason  why  the  talk  of  people  about  us,  their  pride  and 
arrogance,  their  intrusion  upon  our  life  hurts  us  so,  gives 
us  so  much  pain,  and  does  us  so  much  harm,  is  the  weak- 
ness of  our  own  sense  of  personality.  We  go  about  ex- 
posed like  those  unhappy  creatures  that  have  no  shell 
and  are  soft  and  open  to  wounds  on  every  side.  Tak<» 
your  ordhiary  man  to  whom  no  clear  idea  of  himself  has 
ever  dawned,  no  notion  of  something  specific  that  he  is 
to  do,  something  clear  and  peculiar  that  he  is  to  be,  and 
is  not  that  poor  creature,  the  sort  of  man  whom  you  see 
by  the  hundred  all  around  us,  too  plentiful  for  us  to 
think  how  pitiable  they  really  are,  —  is  not  he  just  the 
man  to  be  the  victim  of  the  strife  of  tongues  ?  With  no 
strong  personal  convictions  he  is  always  listening  anx- 
iously to  hear  vrhat  the  crowd  says  is  right,  or  what 
S'xjiety  says  is  manly.  He  is  forever  trying  to  make  out 
in  the  hubbub  of  voices  who  it  is  that  the  majority  are 
cheering  for.  If  he  hears  any  of  the  great  voices  find 
fault  with  what  he  has  done,  it  stabs  him  like  a  dagger. 
If  he   hears   somebody  idly  laugh  at  what  he  calls  hia 


90  THE   SOUL'S   REFUGE   EN  GOD. 

creed  it  throws  bim  off  bis  unstable  standing  ground  and 
he  is  floundering  in  skepticism.  His  weak  jelly-like  life 
is  torn  by  everything  it  touches  as  it  drifts.  Now  the 
first  thing  that  a  Christian  faith  does  for  such  a  man 
is  to  emphasize  his  individuality.  I  mean,  of  course,  a 
real  true  Christian  faith  and  not  the  conventional  coun- 
terfeits of  Christianity,  which  often  deaden  instead  of 
quickening  the  sense  of  personality.  A  true  Christian 
faith  starts  with  the  truth  of  a  personal  redemption  and 
leads  the  man  up  to  personal  duties.  It  takes  this  poor 
indistinguishable  atom  and  says  to  him :  "  God  knows 
you.  To  Him  you  are  not  only  one  of  the  race ;  He 
knows  you  separately;  He  made  you  separately.  His 
Son  died  for  you,  and  there  is  in  you  that  which,  in  some 
way  which  belongs  to  you  alone, can  glorify  Him.  What 
are  you  doing  in  this  feeble  unconscientious  life  ?  Have 
you  never  heard  of  such  a  thing  as  responsibility  ?  Get 
up  ;  repent.  Come  to  God.  Get  the  pattern  of  your 
life  from  Him,  and  then  go  about  your  work  and  be 
yourself."  If  the  man  is  really  a  Christian  he  heara 
that  summons,  and  it  is  the  birth  of  a  true  personality, 
of  the  real  sense  of  himself  in  him.  It  is  a  revelation. 
Behind  him  opens  the  long  vista  of  God's  care,  back  to 
the  eternity  in  which  God  bore  in  His  infinite  knowledge 
the  thought  of  such  a  life  as  his.  Before  him  opens  the 
destiny  of  a  soul  for  which  all  through  eternity  its  own 
character  must  freely  decree  its  life.  And  then  both 
past  and  future  pour  down  their  light  on  the  present, 
and  he  sees  what  there  is  for  him  to  be  doing  right  here 
and  now ;  and  when  he  takes  up  his  work  and  does  it,  he 
can  no  more  be  frightened  out  of  it  than  the  man  to 
whom  Jesus  had  given  his  bed  to  carry  from  Bethesda 


THE  SOUL'S  REFUGE  EN  GOD.  9 1 

op  tho  Street  to  his  own  house  could  have  bten  scared 
by  all  the  curious  gaping  of  the  crowd,  and  drivetu 
back  to  the  dreary  place  under  the  porches  where  he 
had  lain  for  thirty-eight  long  years.  This  is  the  way  ia 
which  men  come  to  do  their  own  works.  This  is  the 
way  in  which  men  come  to  take  up  unpopular  tasks  and 
do  things  which  everybody  about  them  misunderstands 
and  depreciates,  with  a  perfectly  undisturbed  compla- 
cency and  quiet.  There  are  duties  lying  around  us  un 
done  now,  —  things  which  men  call  quixotic  and  laugh 
if  anybody  suggests  that  they  may  be  done  some  day ; 
Dut  as  sure  as  it  is  desirable  that  the  thing  should  be 
done,  some  day  a  man  will  come  to  do  it,  a  man  who  will 
say  with  Jesus,  *'  For  this  cause  was  I  bom  and  for  this 
cause  came  I  into  the  world  ; "  and  that  assurance  will 
make  it  very  easy  for  him  to  disregard  the  ridicule  and 
ntolid  criticism  that  is  sure  to  greet  him  when  he  comes 
and  undertakes  his  task.  It  will  be  as  if  there  had  been 
dug  up  in  some  old  land  a  broken  arm  of  marble  which 
would  fit  nothing  and  lay  about  neglected  and  despised  ; 
but  some  day  or  other  men  digging  a  httle  deeper  found 
the  statue  that  the  arm  belonged  to,  and  immediately 
the  statue  claimed  it,  and  it  became  intelligible  and 
beautiful  when  it  was  set  in  its  true  place. 

3.  The  third  element  of  the  freedom  which  Christianity 
gave  to  its  servants  was  in  the  value  that  it  taught  thera 
to  place  upon  the  talk  of  the  world,  upon  what  David 
calls  the  "  strife  of  tongues."  I  have  already  suggested 
this,  but  it  has  one  or  two  other  points  of  view  which 
seem  to  me  helpful.  I  think  one  of  the  strangest  things 
to  a  man  who  has  really  come  to  a  knowledge  and  service 
of  the  Saviour  is  to  look  back  to  his  own  old  life,  auc'  sea 


92  THE   SOUL'S  REFUGE   IN  GOD. 

how  superficial  it  appears.  He  used  to  be  forevei  passing 
off-band  opinions  about  what  people  all  aroucd  him  did, 
and  used  to  expect,  in  his  easy  way,  that  those  opinions 
of  his  would  really  have  some  weight  with  the  men  upon 
whose  conduct  he  made  his  comments.  Now  he  seea 
how  superficial  all  those  judgments  were.  Now  he  sees 
how  utterly  destitute  he  was  of  any  of  that  serious 
sympathy  which  is  the  only  thing  that  can  really  jus- 
tify us  in  forming  judgments  about  one  another,  or  giv- 
ing one  another  advice.  Nay,  he  sees  more  than  this  :  he 
sees  that  he  really  cared  very  little  when  he  pronounced 
those  opinions  in  such  judicial  style,  and  that  the  most 
profoundly  foolish  thing  that  any  neighbor  of  his,  who 
had  really  considered  thoughtfully  a  plan  of  action,  could 
have  done  would  have  been  to  put  his  well-considered 
plan  aside  because  of  such  cheap  and  thoughtless  criti- 
cism as  he  poured  out  upon  it.  Now  it  seems  to  me  that 
this  sight  of  the  superficialness  of  our  own  judgments  of 
others,  the  way  in  which  we  have  often  pronounced 
solemn-sounding  verdicts  which  really  meant  nothing,  and 
uttered  cheap  ridicule  which  we  should  have  despised  the 
man  if  he  had  minded,  gives  us  very  often  a  startling 
sense  of  what  a  superficial  thing  this  criticism  is  that 
comes  to  us  from  our  brethren  of  which  we  make  so  much 
and  to  which  we  are  always  trimming  our  action.  I  am 
just  going  to  do  something  which  I  have  clearly  made  up 
my  mind  to  do,  and  some  friend  passing  by  catches  sight 
or  me,  standing  with  the  tools  all  in  my  hands,  and  on  a 
mere  momentary  impulse  he  cries  out,  "  What  a  fool  you 
are  to  do  that !  "  and  so  passes  on,  and  has  forgotten  me 
and  my  plan  in  a  moment.  And  yet  it  is  just  that  sort  of 
taunt,  or  the  fear  of  it,  which  has  blighted  many  a  sweet 


THE  SOUL'S   REFUGE  IN  GOD. 


93 


and  healthful  impulse  in  the  bud.  I  have  only  to  think 
how  often  I  have  said  such  things,  and  meant  nothing  by 
them.  I  have  only  to  remember  how  often  I  have  seemed 
to  think  that  my  friend's  doing  a  certain  thing  was  the 
most  ridiculous  action  in  all  the  world,  when  really  I  wfa» 
speaking  only  from  the  instant's  whim,  and  cared  very 
little  whether  he  did  it  or  not,  to  understand  that  this 
man's  sneer  means  probably  no  more  than  mine  meant , 
that  he  does  not  really  care,  and  would,  no  doubt,  be 
much  surprised  if  he  should  know  that  his  small  jeer  had 
turned  me  from  my  purpose.  It  is  good  for  us  often  to 
know  how  superficial,  how  lightly  made,  how  soon  for- 
gotten are  the  judgments  of  our  brethren  which  sound  so 
solemn,  and  which  tyrannize  over  us  so.  Such  a  feeling 
sets  us  free,  and  makes  us  independent.  Be  sure  that 
you  may  feel  that  about  any  cruel  criticism  that  is  ham- 
pering you,  and  may  cast  it  aside  and  forget  it  and  go 
your  way.  The  man  who  made  it  has  probably  forgotten 
it  long  ago. 

There  is  one  other  thing  more  helpful  than  this,  and 
that  is  the  way  in  which  Christianity,  by  putting  us  into 
true  relations  to  our  fellow-men,  saves  us  from  falling 
into  false  relations  to  them.  This  seems  to  me  to  be  the 
principle  on  which  Christianity  works  for  the  redemption 
of  society.  If  I  wanted  to  save  a  young  man  from  being 
a  mere  slave  of  other  people's  opinions,  trying  to  win  their 
applause,  trying  to  escape  their  censure,  I  should  be 
sure  of  succeeding  if  I  could  make  him  really  go  to 
work  for  those  people's  benefit,  reaUy  desire  to  do  them 
good,  and  really  desire  to  avert  harm  from  them.  There 
is  no  escape  from  the  slavery  of  other  men  like  that  which 
comes  of  the  intelligent  and  earnest  service  of  other  men, 


94  THE  SOUL'S  REFUGE  IN  GOD. 

Jesus  sa  d  "  Call  no  man  your  master,"  and  yet  he  said, 
"  Let  him  that  is  chief  among  you  be  your  servant." 
A  nd,  think  of  it !  Who  is  the  man  that  you  have  known 
who  most  completely  served  the  community  he  lived  in  ? 
Remember  the  man  who  in  the  magistrate's  chair,  or  in 
the  teacher's  desk,  in  the  council  room,  or  in  the  court- 
KX)m,  or  in  the  church,  labored  most  earnestly  for  the  peo- 
ple's good.  Was  not  he  the  very  man  who  was  most  inde- 
pe;ident  of  the  people's  whims  ?  Was  he  not  the  last  man 
to  be  softened  by  their  applause,  or  vexed  or  frightened 
by  their  anger  ?  Think  of  Paul.  Did  not  his  very  toil  for 
men's  salvation  lift  him  above,  and  make  him  indifferent 
to  men's  easy  praise  or  blame  ?  And  I  am  sure  of  this, 
that  any  man  of  you  who  finds  in  himself  an  over-sensitive- 
ness to  what  people  say  of  him  will  find  no  escape  from 
such  a  painful  life  so  perfect  as  in  setting  himself  busily 
to  work  to  help  those  very  people's  best  good  in  what  way 
he  can.  The  stud}'  of  their  wants  will  make  him  care- 
less of  their  judgments.  A  healthy  interest  in  them 
will  crowd  out  the  morbid  interest  which  is  always  ser- 
vilely hanging  on  their  opinions  and  afraid  of  their  sneers. 
Between  the  man  who  is  afraid  to  go  his  own  simple 
way,  for  fear  that  his  brother  will  laugh  at  him,  ani  that 
same  man  nobly  resolving  with  Paul,  that  if  meat  cause 
his  brother  to  offend  he  will  eat  no  meat  while  the  world 
stands,  what  a  vast  difference  !  What  slavery  in  the  one 
condition !  What  true  servantship  and  freedom  in  the 
other !  And  if  a  true  faith  in  Christ  does  indeed  take 
all  men  up  into  His  humanity,  and,  because  we  are  His 
servants,  make  us  the  servants  also,  the  willing  servants, 
of  all  men,  as  His  brethren,  and  for  His  sake  ;  if  when 
I  am  really  Christ's,  the  man  by  my  side  whom  I  have 


THE   SOUL'S  REFUGE  IN   GOD.  95 

feared  and  flattered  becomes  changed  into  a  brother 
of  my  Lord  for  whom  I  am  to  work  as  if  I  worked 
for  Him,  then  does  not  Christianity  save  a  man  from 
the  low  servitude  by  introducing  him  into  the  higher 
service?  Entering  into  Christ,  I  find  there  my  breth- 
ren as  His  brethren ;  and  while  I  devote  myself  to 
them  as  earnestly  as  I  can,  I  cease  to  care  for  their  idio 
criticisms  and  foolish  quarrels.  Once  more  He  has  hid 
me  in  His  pavilion  from  the  strife  of  tongues.  And  yet 
you  see  how  very  far  this  picture  of  Christian  security  is 
from  easy  self-indulgence  and  idle  rest.  It  is  all  alive 
with  work,  only  it  is  a  work  that  is  full  of  peace. 

These  are  the  elements,  then,  of  the  Christian's  secur- 
ity. These  are  what  Christ's  religion  does  for  us  all  to 
lift  us  up  above  and  separate  us  from  the  pride  of  men  and 
the  sti'ife  of  tongues.  It  does  not  take  us  away  out  of  the 
world,  but  right  here  in  the  world  it  surrounds  us  with 
God's  presence,  it  brings  out  our  own  personality,  and  it 
teaches  us  the  value  of  the  things  we  used  to  fear,  so  that 
we  can  despise  them.  Again  I  turn  —  as  I  have  turned  so 
often  in  describing  any  aspect  or  power  of  the  Christian 
life  —  to  see  a  perfect  manifestation  in  the  perfect  Chris- 
tian life  of  Christ.  As  we  look  over  His  career,  how  can 
we  describe  its  serenity  and  composure  except  in  these 
words :  "  God  hid  Him  in  the  secret  of  His  presence  from 
the  pride  of  man,  and  kept  Him  secretly  in  a  pavilion 
from  the  strife  of  tongues."  How  the  strife  of  tongues 
/aged  about  Him  all  his  life !  From  the  time  when  Herod 
and  the  scribes  debated  where  He  was  to  be  born,  that 
they  might  murder  Him,  down  to  the  day  when  the  peo- 
ple cried,  "Crucify  Him,"  and  mocked  Him  as  He  hung 
upon  the  cross ;  in  the  days  when  the  crowded  synagogue 


.4tj  TBDE   SOUL'S  REFUGE  IN  GOD. 

at  Nazareth  rose  up  and  clamored  for  His  blood ;  in  the 
day  when  the  Pharisees  gathered  around  Him  in  the  tem- 
ple and  poured  their  subtle  questions  fast  upon  Him  to 
try  to  drive  Him  to  a  foolish  word ;  in  the  day  when  the 
disciples  came  to  a  quarrel  in  His  veiy  sight  about  their 
poor  ambition  to  be  greatest :  in  these,  and  countless  days 
like  them,  He  lived  right  in  the  midst  of  the  strife  of 
tongues.  But,  close  to  His  Father  always,  clear  in  His 
own  duty  always,  and  always  trying  to  help  men  so  ear- 
nestly that  He  was  not  capable  of  being  provoked  by  them. 
He  was  completely  apart  from  all  the  strife.  He  was  hid 
in  the  secret  of  His  Father's  presence.  We  cannot  but  be 
struck  with  awe  when  we  think  what  that  phrase,  whose 
beauty  and  significance  wc  have  partly  understood  as  it 
applied  to  us,  must  have  meant  to  Jesus.  Our  closest 
communion  with  God  is  so  distant  compared  with  the 
perfect  oneness  between  Him  and  His  Father.  We  run 
into  the  shelter  of  the  divine  life,  just  creep  across  the 
threshold  where  no  trouble  can  pursue,  and  stand  thank- 
ful and  trembling  there.  We  hide  ourself  behind  the 
robes  of  the  Eternal  Mercy,  and  thence  look  out  in  an 
assurance,  that  is  fearful  still,  upon  the  danger  which 
cannot  touch  us  there.  But  He,  from  the  very  heart  of 
the  Eternal  Being,  looks  out  on  sin  and  aees  its  weak- 
ness, looks  out  on  goodness  and  sees  its  st/ength.  We 
cannot  know  His  peace.  It  must  have  been  so  absolute. 
There  must  have  been  such  a  pity  in  His  heart  when 
they  tormented  Him,  when  they  tied  Him  to  a  column 
ftnd  scourged  Him,  when  they  nailed  Him  to  the  cross 
at  last,  and  all  the  while  were  looking  to  see  Hini  give 
way  and  tremble,  and  all  the  while  the  soul  which  ihey 
thought  they  were  reaching  and  torturir^  was    far   olT. 


THE  SOUL'S  KEFUGE   IN   GOD.  if  I 

beyond  their  reach,  hid  in  the  secret  of  God's  presence, 
hid  in  God.  It  was  as  if  men  flung  water  at  the  stars 
and  tried  to  put  them  out,  and  the  stars  shone  on  calmly 
and  safely  and  took  no  notice  of  their  persecutors,  except 
to  giye  them  light. 

And  this  brings  up  to  us  that  verse  of  Paul's,  which  is 
the  very  verse  we  need  to  close  with.  He  talks  of  the 
life  that  men  might  live,  that  some  men  do  live,  and  he 
says,  "  Your  life  is  hid  with  Christ  in  God."  If  we  are 
really  Christ's,  then  back  into  the  very  bosom  of  His  Fa- 
ther where  Christ  is  hid,  there  He  will  carry  us.  We  too 
shall  look  out  and  be  as  calm  and  as  independent  as  He  is. 
The  needs  of  men  shall  touch  us  just  as  keenly  as  they 
touch  Him,  but  the  sneers  and  strifes  of  men  shall  pass 
us  by  as  they  pass  by  Him  and  leave  no  mark  on  His  un- 
ruffled life.  It  will  be  just  as  impossible,  when  that  time 
comes,  for  us  to  work  ourself  into  a  passion  about  yester- 
day's gossip,  as  it  was  for  Jesus  to  become  a  partisan  in 
the  quarrel  about  the  undivided  inheritance.  And  yet 
for  us,  just  as  for  Him,  this  will  not  mean  a  cold  and  self- 
ish separation  from  our  brethren.  We  shall  be  infinitely 
closer  to  their  real  life  when  we  separate  ourself  from 
their  outside  strifes  and  superficial  pride,  and  know  and 
love  them  truly  by  knowing  and  loving  them  in  God. 

This  is  the  power  and  progress  of  true  Christianity. 
It  leads  us  into,  it  abounds  in  peace.  It  is  a  brave,  vig- 
orous peace,  full  of  life,  full  of  interest  and  work.  It  is 
a  peace  that  means  thoroughness,  that  refuses  to  waste 
its  force  and  time  in  little  superficial  tumults  which  come 
to  nothing,  while  there  is  so  much  real  work  to  be  done, 
so  much  real  help  to  be  given,  and  such  a  real  life  to  be 
lived  with  God.  That  peace,  His  peace,  may  Jesus  give 
to  us  all. 


VI. 

THE  CONSOLATIONS  OP  GOD. 
"Are  the  consolations  of  God  small  with  thee  V  —  Job  xv.  11. 

If  we  could  fully  tell  each  other  our  thoughts  of  God^ 
or  if  we  could  look  with  perfect  clearness  into  one  an- 
other's hearts,  and  see  what  thought  of  the  great  Father 
is  lying  there,  no  doubt  the  variety  of  our  conceptions 
of  Him  would  surprise  us  very  much.  He  must  appear 
BO  differently  to  His  different  children  ;  and  while  this 
difference  of  our  ideas  of  God  indicates,  no  doubt,  in  part 
our  blindness  and  half-sightedness,  it  indicates  still  more 
the  many-sidedness  of  His  great  nature.  He  has  a  dif- 
ferent side  of  Himself  to  show  to  each  of  us. 

But  this  is  not  all.  Not  only  to  different  men  does 
God  give  different  impressions  of  Himself,  but  on  differ- 
ent parts  of  the  same  man's  life  He  shines  with  very 
different  lights  and  colors.  Can  we  remember  when  we 
were  children,  and  had  our  own  thoughts  of  God,  how 
very  strange,  how  hard  to  grasp  appeared  the  pictures  of 
Him  which  seemed  to  give  our  elders  such  delight ;  the 
accounts  which  we  read  in  gi"own-up  people's  books,  or 
heard  in  the  sermons  of  grown-up  ministers?  The  truly 
live  and  growing  Christian  might  mark  the  different 
stages  of  his  advancing  life  by  the  different  aspects  which 
he  saw  of  God.  He  might  recognize  his  fifteenth  year  by 
ore  sort  of  revelation  of  the  Fatherhor;d,  and  his  twenty 


THE  CONSOLATIONS  OF  GOD.  99 

fiftb  by  aiiutLer,  and  his  fiftieth  by  another.  It  would  be 
a  noble  biography,  —  the  history  of  the  sun's  rising,  and 
of  the  different  stories  that  it  told  of  itself,  the  different 
shadows  that  it  cast,  uiLtil  its  perfect  noon.  It  may  be 
that  in  eternity  there  shall  be  some  such  ageless  condition 
AS  shall  comprise  the  vision  of  all  ages,  and  take  in  at 
once  the  whole  character  of  God ;  but  here  the  beauty  of 
living  lies  largely  in  the  way  in  which  we  are  always  com 
ing  in  sight  of  new  characteristics  and  capacities  in  Him. 
I  want  to  speak  to-day  about  God  as  the  Consoler. 
"  Are  the  consolations  of  God  small  with  thee  ?"  And  I 
have  been  led  to  these  opening  words  by  thinking  how 
this  side  of  God's  life  shows  itself  only  to  certain  con- 
ditions of  this  life  of  ours.  It  is  not  for  everybody.  It 
is  not  for  the  very  young  and  joyous.  You  would  not 
go  to  a  young  man  just  bursting  through  the  open  doors 
of  life,  radiant  with  health,  eager  for  work,  with  an  in- 
finite sense  of  vitality,  and  say,  "  Come,  here  is  God,  who 
consoles  men.  Give  yourself  to  Him."  To  such  a  soul 
you  have  something  else  to  say :  "  Here  is  God  the 
strengthener.  Here  is  the  Setter  of  great  tasks  ;  the 
God  who  holds  His  crown  of  victory  on  the  tops  of  high 
mountains  up  which  His  eager-hearted  young  heroes  may 
climb  to  win  it ;  the  God  who  asks  great  sacrifices  and 
who  gives  glorious  rewards."  That  is  what  you  would 
say,  or  what  you  ought  to  say,  to  the  young  strong  man  to 
whom  you  want  to  make  God  known.  You  say  nothing 
about  the  God  of  repair,  the  God  of  consolation,  the  God 
who  takes  the  broken  life  into  His  hands  and  mends  it ; 
nothing  of  that  God  yet.  The  time  will  come  for  that. 
And  is  there  anything  more  touching  and  pathetic  in  the 
history  of  man  than  to  see  how  absolutely,  without  exeep 


100  THE   CONSOLATIONS    OF   GOD. 

tioD,  the  men  and  women  who  start  out  with  only  Uio 
need  of  tasks,  of  duties,  of  something  which  can  call  out 
their  powers,  and  of  the  smile  of  God  stimulating  and 
encouraging  them,  —  how  they  all  come,  one  by  one,  cer- 
tainly up  to  the  place  in  life  where  they  need  console' 
tion  ?  I  will  tell  you  what  it  seems  to  me  like.  Have 
you  ever  seen,  or  perhaps  made  one  of,  a  party  of  people 
who  were  going  to  explore  some  deep,  dark  cavern,  —  the 
Mammoth  Cave  of  Kentucky,  or  the  Catacombs  of  Rome  ? 
They  all  stand  out  in  the  sunlight,  and  the  attendants, 
who  know  the  journey  they  are  going  to  make,  pass 
round  among  them  and  put  into  the  hands  of  each  a 
lighted  candle.  How  useless  it  seems.  How  pale  and 
colorless  the  little  flame  appears  in  the  gorgeous  flood  of 
sunlight.  But  the  procession  moves  along.  One  after 
another  enters  the  dark  cavern's  mouth.  One  after 
another  loses  the  splendor  of  daylight.  In  the  hands 
of  one  after  another  the  feeble  candle-flame  comes  out 
bright  in  the  darkness,  and  by  and  by  they  are  all  walk- 
ing in  the  dark,  holding  fast  their  candles  as  if  they 
were  their  very  life  ;  totally  dependent  now  upon  what 
seemed  so  useless  half  an  hour  ago.  That  seems  to 
me  to  be  a  picture  of  the  way  in  which  God's  prom- 
ises of  consolation,  which  we  attach  but  very  little  mean- 
ing to  at  first,  come  out  into  beauty  and  value  as  we 
pass  on  into  our  lives.  The  nature  begins  to  break 
somewhere.  Perhaps  the  physical  strength  gives  way 
first.  Long  before  the  courage  of  the  heart  or  the 
mind's  quick  activity  is  dimmed,  the  knees  refuse  their 
office  and  the  heart  beats  slow.  It  is  an  epoch  in  a 
man's  life  when  he  takes  his  first  medicine  to  repaix 
the   ravages   of   time,  the  wear   of   the   mathine.     B«> 


THE  CONSOLATIONS  OF  GOD.  101 

fore  he  has  taken  food  for  support ;  now  he  takes  med- 
icine for  repair.  He  has  reached  his  need  of  consolation. 
Or  perhaps  it  is  the  spirit  that  gives  way  before  the  body 
breaks.  No  matter  in  what  order  the  new  need  arrives, 
there  is  something  pathetic  in  the  way  in  which  it  comes 
to  everybody.  The  social  life  decays,  or  with  one  dread- 
ful blow  is  dashed  to  pieces.  The  perfect  trust  we  had 
in  one  another  is  dislodged.  The  courage  goes  out  on  its 
task  and  brings  back  no  booty  of  success.  The  terrible 
disappointment  in  self,  the  consciousness  of  sin,  bursts  or 
creeps  in  upon  us,  and  then  the  hands  for  the  first  time 
are  reached  out  for  consolation,  and  the  great  doors  — 
which  we  have  hardly  noticed  as  we  passed  and  repassed 
on  this  side  of  the  Divine  nature,  they  were  shut  so  close, 
and  we  saw  so  little  need  of  entering  this  way  —  are  flung 
wide  open  to  take  the  tired  and  disappointed  creature  in. 
It  is  as  if  we  had  sailed  gayly  all  day  up  and  down  a 
glorious  coast,  rejoicing  in  the  winds  that  swept  around 
its  headlands  and  caught  our  sails,  thinking  the  bolder 
the  coast  the  better,  never  asking  whether  there  were  a 
place  of  refuge  anywhere;  till  at  last  the  storm  burst 
upon  us,  and  then  we  never  thought  the  coast  so  beauti- 
ful as  when  we  saw  her  open  an  unexpected  harbor,  and 
take  us  into  still  water  behind  the  rocks  that  we  had 
been  glorying  in,  out  of  the  tempest's  reach. 

The  world  seems  to  have  lived  the  same  life,  with  the 
same  succession  of  experiences  in  which  each  man  Hvee. 
What  is  the  old  story  of  the  book  of  Genesis  but  this, 
—  the  tale  of  how  the  world  came  to  need,  and,  when  it 
needed,  found  God  the  consoler  ?  There  was  no  talk  of 
consolation  in  those  walks  beneath  the  trees,  before  the 
sin,  when  man  and  his  Maker  held  mysterious  converse 


102  THE  CONSOLATIONS   OF   GOD. 

in  ways  which  we  with  our  blinded  senses  cannot  know, 
How  many  ages  slipped  by  so,  who  can  tell  ?  But  by 
and  by  the  catastrophe  whose  fruits  are  in  all  men'i 
lires  came,  and  how  instantly  a  new  power  in  God  wa» 
touched.  In  all  the  anger  of  God  in  these  first  chapters 
of  the  Book  of  Life  after  the  fall,  we  feel  still  that  we 
have  touched  a  before  unmanifested  power  of  His  nat- 
ure. With  the  first  promise  of  repair,  the  first  suggestion 
of  a  Redeemer,  He  has  opened  His  power  of  consolation. 
It  is  as  if  we  saw  a  father  stoop,  and  for  the  first  time 
pick  up  and  set  upon  his  feet  the  child  who  thus  far  had 
run  strongly  on  and  needed  only  to  be  guided.  It  gives 
us  a  new  sight  into  the  heart  of  his  fatherhood ;  and  so 
smce  Eden  the  world  has  rested,  not  merely  on  the  helps 
and  the  commandments,  but  on  the  consolations  of  God. 

When  we  think  about  the  death  of  children,  and  of  the 
other  life  on  which  they  enter  after  they  have  left  this 
world,  it  seems  as  if  it  must  be  an  everlasting  difference 
in  that  life  for  them,  that  they  have  never  known  what  it 
is  to  be  consoled  by  God.  That  they  will  be  less  happy 
no  man  can  say ;  for  who  shall  compare  with  one  another 
the  perfect  happinesses  of  Heaven?  But  surely  there 
must  be  something  of  God  that  has  been  shown  to  His 
venerable  servant,  who  has  been  consoled  a  thousand 
times,  whose  life  has  been  broken  again  and  again,  and 
again  and  again  repaired  by  God  ;  something  that  he 
knows  of  God  which  never  can  be  known  to  the  little 
child  whose  life,  from  its  first  beginning  here  to  the  very 
end  of  its  eternity,  never  sinned  or  sorrowed,  and  so 
never  needed  repair  or  consolation. 

And  yet  we  cannot  say  how  early  in  this  life  of  ours 
ihe  God  of  consolation  may  be  needed,  and  may  sho^ 


THE  CONSOLATIONS   OF  GOD.  103 

Himself  to  the  needy  soul.  I  would  not  seem  to  count  out 
of  my  subject  for  to-day  those  of  my  people,  the  youngest, 
the  happiest,  the  most  hopeful,  on  whom  I  should  be 
■orry  any  Sunday  to  turn  my  back  and  say,  "  There  ia 
nothing  for  you  to-day."  Perhaps  their  hearts  will  tell 
me  that  they  have  sorrows  and  disappointments  of  theit 
own.  And  certainly  they  have,  and  it  is  the  glory 
of  God's  consolations  that  they  reach  every  grade  and 
kind  of  need.  The  child  with  his  sorrows  has  as  much 
right  to  them  as  the  man  with  his.  Indeed,  there  is  one 
view  in  which  no  trouble  of  man  is  great  enough,  and 
then  there  is  another  view  in  which  no  trouble  of  man  is 
too  small,  to  be  worthy  of  touching  the  heart  of  God. 
And  so  let  us  count  nobody  out ;  let  us  all  come  together 
and  try  to  find  what  God's  consolations  are  ;  try  to  find 
how  God  consoles  His  people. 

1.  What  I  shall  say  will  be  good  for  nothing,  will  be 
mere  theorizing,  unless  I  simply  draw  out  our  own  ex- 
perience of  God  into  description,  and  tell  how  He  really 
has  consoled  us  all.  Let  me  say,  then,  first  of  all,  that 
God  is  the  consoler  of  man  by  the  very  fact  of  His  exist- 
ence. There  is  a  class  of  passages  in  the  Bible  which  to 
me  seem  mysteriously  beautiful,  and  which  appear  to  rest 
the  peace  of  the  human  soul  upon  the  mere  fact  of  the  ex- 
istence of  the  larger  life  of  God.  Such  is  that  verse  of 
the  forty-sixth  Psalm,  "  Be  still,  and  know  that  I  am  God." 
*'  Thou  shalt  know  that  I,  the  Lord,  am,"  is  the  noble 
promise  that  comes  again  and  again,  full  of  reassurance. 
And  when  God's  people,  trampled,  bruised,  broken,  trod- 
den in  the  dust  in  Egypt,  asked  by  Moses  for  the  name 
of  the  God  who  had  promised  them  His  deliverance,  it 
waa  a  mere  assertion  of  the  awful  and  supreme  existenc<» 


104  THE  CONSOLATIONS   OF   GOD. 

that  was  given  in  reply :  "  I  AM  hath  sent  me."  No 
doubt  in  all  such  cases  there  is  active  character  within 
the  mere  existence  and  coming  out  clearly  through  it 
and  this  character  has  its  declared  relations  to  the  man 
who  needs  consoling,  but  still  it  is  primarily  the  fact  of 
existence.  It  is  because  God  is  that  man  is  bidden  to  b€. 
at  peace.  And  this  is  not  hard  to  understand.  If  any- 
body has  ever  felt  that  his  life,  with  its  little  woes,  was 
easier  to  bear  because  there  were  great  men  living  the 
same  human  life  with  him,  he  can  understand  it  perfectly. 
The  men  of  larger  life  of  whom  he  knew  never  came 
near  him,  never  touched  his  life,  never  spoke  to  him,  per- 
haps never  knew  of  his  existence.  It  may  be  they  were 
merely  men  whose  lives  he  had  read  in  books.  For  here 
is  one  of  the  greatest  uses  of  really  great  history  and  bi- 
ography, in  their  peace-giving  and  consoling  power.  It 
was  not  what  the  great  men  of  the  world  had  done.  It 
was  simply  that  they  had  existed.  I  pity  the  man  who 
has  never  in  his  best  moods  felt  his  life  consoled  and  com- 
forted in  its  littleness  by  the  larger  lives  that  he  could 
look  at  and  know  that  they  too  were  men,  living  in  the 
same  humanity  with  himself,  only  living  in  it  so  much 
more  largely. 

For  so  much  of  our  need  of  consolation  comes  just  in 
this  way,  from  the  littleness  of  our  life,  its  pettiness  and 
weariness  insensibly  transferring  itself  to  all  life,  and  mak- 
ing us  skeptical  about  anything  great  or  worth  living  for 
in  life  at  all ;  and  it  is  our  rescue  from  this  debilitating 
doubt  that  is  the  blessing  which  falls  upon  us  when,  leav- 
ing our  own  insignificance  behind,  we  let  our  hearts  rest 
with  comfort  on  the  mere  fact  that  there  are  men  of 
great,  broad,  generous,  and  healthy  lives,  —  men  like  the 
greatest  that  we  know. 


THE   CONSOLATIONS    OF   GOD.  105 

Indeed  the  power  of  mere  activity  is  often  overrated. 
It  is  not  what  the  best  men  do,  but  what  they  are,  that 
constitutes  their  truest  benefaction  to  their  fellow-men. 
The  things  that  men  do  get  their  chief  value,  after  all< 
from  the  way  in  which  they  are  able  to  show  the  exist- 
ence of  character  which  can  comfort  and  help  mankind. 
Certainly,  in  our  own  little  sphere,  it  is  not  the  most 
active  people  to  whom  we  owe  the  most.  Among  the 
common  people  whom  we  know  it  is  not  necessarily  those 
who  are  busiest,  not  those  who,  meteor-like,  are  ever  on 
the  rush  after  some  visible  change  and  work.  It  is  the 
lives,  like  the  stars,  which  simply  pour  down  on  us  the 
calm  light  of  their  bright  and  faithful  being,  up  to  which 
we  look  and  out  of  which  we  gather  the  deepest  calm 
and  courage.  It  seems  to  me  that  there  is  reassurance 
here  for  many  of  us  who  seem  to  have  no  chance  for  act- 
ive usefulness.  We  can  do  nothing  for  our  fellow-men. 
But  still  it  is  good  to  know  that  we  can  be  something  for 
them  ;  to  know  (and  this  we  may  know  surely)  that  no 
man  or  woman  of  the  humblest  sort  can  really  be  strong, 
gentle,  pure,  and  good,  without  the  world  being  better 
for  it,  without  somebody  being  helped  and  comforted  by 
the  very  existence  of  that  goodness. 

And  now  just  so  it  is  with  God's  life  and  the  life  of 
man.  Here  is  an  atheist.  He  is  a  thoughtful,  conscien- 
tious man,  but  by  failure  after  failure  his  life  has  been 
broken  down  into  a  low  and  hopeless  tone.  He  has  come 
to  a  terribJe  doubt  whether  there  is  any  such  thing  as  be- 
ing good.  He  seems  a  mere  sham  to  himself,  and  all  hia 
fellow-men  are  shams  around  him.  Give  what  account 
he  will  of  what  men  call  righteousness,  he  has  really  lost 
the  belief  of  absolute  morality  altogether.     He  is  demor- 


106  THE  CONSOLATIONS  OF   GOD. 

alized.  He  has  fallen  down  into  the  wretched  theories 
of  expediency,  and  he  hates  himself  for  lying  there,  and 
yet  he  cannot  get  away.  Does  not  that  man  need  3on- 
solation  ?  Poor  fellow,  with  his  broken  wings  and  be- 
wildered brain,  where  is  the  man  that  has  any  such  neod 
aa  he  has  to  be  taken  up  into  some  strong,  wise  arms,  and 
to  be  refreshed,  repaired,  remoralized  ?  And  then  sud- 
denly or  gradually  it  is  made  known  to  this  man  that 
there  is  a  perfect  God.  Is  that  nothing  to  him  ?  The 
God  does  not  speak  to  him  yet.  He  does  not  know  that 
the  God  cares  for  him  ;  not  even  that  the  God  is  aware 
of  him.  Only  this,  that  the  God  is ;  that  purity  is  not 
a  delusion,  and  justice  not  a  guess,  for  there  is  a  perfectly 
pure,  just  Being ;  there  is  a  righteous  one.  Is  it  not 
like  the  sunrising  to  that  poor  broken  man  ?  Is  he  not 
comforted  ?  I  do  not  believe  that  there  is  any  darkest, 
deepest  dungeon  under  any  hoi-rible  old  castle,  most  ut- 
terly and  hopelessly  out  of  the  reach  of  sunlight,  in  which 
it  would  not  bring  a  new  pang  to  the  heart  of  the  poor 
wretch  imprisoned  there  if  he  knew  that  the  sun,  which 
he  never  saw  and  never  should  see  again,  was  gone  out 
of  the  heavens.  Although  he  lives  utterly  in  the  dark, 
the  knowledge  that  there  is  sunlight  helps  him  and 
he  is  not  quite  desperate.  Although  we  live  petty  and 
foolish  lives,  the  knowledge  that  there  is  greatness  and 
wisdom,  the  knowledge  that  there  is  God,  is  a  far  greater 
and  more  constant  consolation  to  us  than  we  know. 

2.  But  we  must  go  a  great  deal  farther  than  this.  We 
begin  with  the  knowledge  of  God's  existence,  and  that 
consoles  us  when  we  are  in  perplexity  and  sorrow. 
Many  and  many  a  heart  has  entered  into  that  knowl- 
edge, and  found  it  the  entrance  into  peace.     But  wb»* 


THE   CONSOLATIONS   OF    GOD.  107 

comes  next?  The  sympathy  of  this  same  God  <Fhose 
existence  is  abeady  real  to  us.  It  becomes  know  j  to  us 
not  merely  that  He  is,  but  that  He  cares  for  us.  Not 
merely  His  life,  but  His  love,  becomes  a  fact.  Surely  thia 
18  a  great  step  forward.  We  had  to  convince  ourselves 
perhaps  that  there  was  not  something  cold  and  distant  in 
the  thought  of  the  divine  existence  as  a  source  of  human 
consolation.  We  know  that  that  thought  does  wonder- 
fully help  those  to  whom  it  is  very  real,  but  it  is  not  so 
easy  to  understand  beforehand  that  it  will  help  men  to 
know  of  the  great  "  I  AM."  But  here  there  can  be  no 
doubt.  Any  one  will  say,  "  If  I  could  only  be  sure  that 
He,  the  God  of  all  things,  really  cares  for  me ;  that  when 
any  sorrow  comes  to  me,  it  strikes  right  at  His  heart,  and 
He  is  sorry  too,  —  if  I  could  be  sure  of  this,  I  do  not 
know  of  anything  I  could  not  bear.  What  is  there  that 
I  could  not  tolerate  ?  Nay,  what  is  there  that  I  would 
not  almost  welcome,  if  it  could  by  any  violence  break 
open  a  way  by  which  God  could  come  down  to  me  and 
show  me  that  perfect  nature  as  my  friend,  my  helper, 
thoughtful  for  my  welfare  and  my  woe?"  Nor  is  this  all 
mere  selfishness.  I  rather  like  to  think  that  the  real  rea- 
son why  the  sufferer  rejoices  in  the  sympathy  of  God  is 
that  thereby,  through  love,  that  dear  and  perfect  nature 
after  which  he  has  struggled  before  is  made  completely 
known  to  him.  Love  is  the  translating  medium.  It  ig 
not  merely  that  now  that  whose  absolute  existence  he  had 
comprehended  already  has  become  his ;  that  he  ia  reap- 
ing the  benefit  of  that  which  before  he  had  regarded  only 
as  absolutely  being.  It  is  not  only  that  the  sky,  which 
hung  in  majesty  and  peace  over  the  whole  earth,  at  last 
has  dropped  its  rain  upon  his  garden.     It  is  rather  that 


108  THE  CONSOLATIONS  OF  GOD. 

througli  this  special  love  for  him,  the  absolute  and  ever- 
lasting Deity  has  been  made  known  to  him.  It  ia  that 
through  God's  sympathy  he  knows  God  more  intfcEsely 
and  more  nearly,  and  so  all  the  consolations  of  God'a 
being  have  become  more  real  to  him. 

I  think  that  this  is  so.  I  think  that  any  sensitive  and 
thoughtful  soul  will  feel  the  real  distinction.  And  yet  I 
do  not  think  much  of  such  distinctions.  I  know  we  do 
not  gain,  but  rather  lose,  by  any  attempt  to  separate  the 
elements  of  comfort  that  come  to  man's  soul  in  the  one 
complete  round  gift  of  the  sympathy  of  God.  Who  shall 
attempt  to  describe  the  indescribable,  and  tell  the  power 
of  sympathy  ?  You  go  to  see  your  friend  on  whom  some 
great  sorrow  has  fallen.  You  sit  beside  him.  You  look 
into  his  eyes.  You  say  a  few  broken  and  faltering  w  ^rda. 
A.nd  then  you  go  away  disheartened.  How  entirely  you 
have  failed  to  do  for  him  that  which  you  went  to  do, 
that  which  you  would  have  given  the  world  to  do.  How 
you  have  seemed  only  to  intrude  on  him  with  vulgar  curi- 
osity when  you  really  longed  to  help  him.  How  many 
times  you  have  done  this,  and  then  how  many  times  you 
have  been  afterwards  surprised  to  find  that  you  really  did 
help  him  with  that  silent  visit.  My  dear  friends,  never 
let  the  seeming  worthlessness  of  sympathy  make  you  keep 
back  that  sympathy  of  which,  when  men  are  suffering 
around  you,  your  heart  is  full.  Go  and  give  it  without 
Asking  yourself  whether  it  is  worth  the  while  to  give  it. 
It  is  too  sacred  a  thing  for  you  to  tell  what  it  is  worth. 
G  3d,  from  whom  it  comes,  sends  it  through  you  to  Hia 
needy  child.  Do  not  ever  let  any  low  skepticism  make 
you  distrust  it,  but  speak  out  what  God  has  put  it  in 
your  heart  to  speak  to  any  sufferer.     The  sympathy  of 


THE  CONSOLATIONS   OF  GOD.  109 

'jh-d  for  man  has  just  this  same  difficulty  about  it,  if 
wc  try  to  analyze  it.  We  cannot  say  that  He  has  done 
anything  for  us.  We  cannot  tell  even  of  any  thought 
that  He  has  put  into  our  minds.  Merely  He  has  been 
near  us.  He  has  known  that  we  were  in  trouble  and  He 
has  been  sorry  for  us. 

How  do  we  learn  of  such  a  sympathy  of  God  ?  How 
can  we  really  come  to  believe  that  He  knows  our  individ- 
ual troubles,  and  sorrows  for  them  with  us  ?  I  think 
that  this  is  a  hard  question  for  a  great  many  people. 
The  magnitude  of  the  world,  the  multitudes  of  souls  that 
God  has  made,  perplexes  many  hearts,  and  makes  it  very 
hard  for  them  to  believe  in  personal,  individual  sympathy 
and  care.  More  than  from  any  abstract  or  scientific  ar- 
guments about  the  universality  of  great  laws,  I  think  it 
is  the  bigness  of  the  world,  the  millions  upon  millions  of 
needy  souls,  that  makes  it  hard  for  men  to  believe  in  the 
discriminating  care  and  personal  love  of  God  for  each. 
Our  wider  view  across  the  world,  the  readiness  with  which 
we  take  in  all  the  millions  of  our  fellow-men,  makes  it 
harder  for  us.  The  Jew,  shut  up  in  his  little  nation,  found 
it  easier.  In  such  perplexity  what  shall  we  do  ?  I  know 
only  the  most  simple  answers.  In  the  first  place,  give 
free  and  bold  play  to  those  instincts  of  the  heart  which 
believe  that  the  Creator  must  care  for  the  creatures  He 
has  made,  and  that  the  only  real  effective  care  for  them 
must  be  that  which  takes  each  of  them  into  His  love, 
and  knowing  it  separately  surrounds  it  with  His  separate 
sympathy.  In  the  next  place,  open  the  heart  to  that  same 
conviction  as  it  has  been  profoundly  pressed  upon  the 
hearts  of  multitudes  of  men  everywhere.  It  is  not  in- 
conceivable.    It  is  only  the  special  prominence  of  certaip 


no  THE  CONSOLATIONS   OF  GOD. 

tdeas  in  our  time  which  have  made  some  people  think 
.t  inconceivable  that  a  personal  God  should  care  sep* 
irately  for  every  one  of  His  million  children.  It  is  not 
inconceivable  when  such  multitudes  of  men  have  cca- 
ceived  it,  have  rested  their  whole  weight  upon  tha 
assurance,  have  run  into  the  shelter  of  that  certainty 
whenever  the  storm  was  too  high  and  too  strong  for 
them.  Above  all,  get  the  great  spirit  of  the  Bible. 
Read  into  the  heart  of  the  Book  of  Life  until  you  are 
thoroughly  possessed  with  its  idea,  —  the  idea  which  gives 
it  its  whole  consistency  and  shape,  the  idea  without 
which  it  would  all  drop  to  pieces,  —  that  there  is  not  one 
life  which  the  Life  Giver  ever  loses  out  of  His  sight ; 
not  one  which  sins  so  that  He  casts  it  away  ;  not  one 
which  is  not  so  near  to  Him  that  whatever  touches  it 
touches  Him  with  sorrow  or  with  joy.  I  know  nothing 
which  can  secure  a  man  from  the  sad  skepticism  about 
the  personal  sympathy  of  God,  like  a  complete  entrance 
into  the  atmosphere  and  spirit  of  the  Bible,  in  which  that 
sympathy  is  the  first  accepted  fact  of  life. 

3.  By  His  existence  and  by  His  felt  sympathy,  then, 
God  gives  His  consolations  to  the  souls  of  those  who 
need  them.  But  more  than  this.  When  your  fiiend  ia 
in  trouble  you  first  of  all  try  to  remind  him,  in  some  most 
unobtrusive  way,  that  you  are  living  and  that  you  are  his 
friend.  Any  little  token  of  your  life,  a  gift  of  flowers, 
or  any  trifle,  will  do  that.  Then  you  go  and  sit  down 
by  him,  and  without  a  word  let  him  know  not  merely  in 
general  that  you  are  his  friend,  but  that  you  are  very 
sorry  for  .lim  in  this  special  sorrow.  But  if  you  really 
respect  him  and  care  for  his  whole  nature,  yon  want  to  do 
Boraething  more  than  that.     You  want,  in  the  kindest 


THE   CONSOLATIONS  OF  GOD.  11! 

and  gen  tlest  way,  to  get  certain  great  consoling  thoughts 
home  to  his  bruised  and  broken  heart.  You  are  not  sat- 
isfied until  the  reason,  too,  has  found  its  consolation,  and 
through  its  open  doors  comfort  has  spread  through  the 
part  of  his  nature  which  is  open  to  that  access.  And  so 
it  is  with  God.  He,  too,  has  His  great  truths.  His  ideas 
which  He  brings  to  the  hearts  He  wishes  to  console.  He 
does  not  treat  His  sufferers  like  children  who  are  simply 
to  be  petted  with  soft  words,  and  patted  with  soft  hands 
till  they  forget  their  grief.  He  deals  with  them  as  men 
who  are  capable  of  knowing  the  meanings,  the  explana- 
tions, and  the  purposes  of  the  troubles  that  come  to  them. 
And  so  He  gives  them  His  great  truths  of  consolation. 
What  are  those  truths  ?  Education,  spirituality,  and  im- 
mortality, —  these  seem  to  be  the  sum  of  them.  You  are 
in  great  distress.  Your  friend  is  gone.  Your  life  is  broken. 
Your  soul  is  stunned.  Is  it  possible  that,  sitting  still  or 
walking  drearily  about  in  your  grief,  God  should  make 
you  know  education  or  the  law  of  growth,  the  endless 
principle  of  the  sacrifice  of  a  present  for  a  better  future ; 
should  reveal  spirituality,  and  make  you  know  the  soul's 
value  as  far  superior  to  anything  that  can  concern  the 
outer  life  ;  should  open  to  you  immortality,  and  show  you 
the  endlessness  of  His  plans,  so  that  what  has  seemed  to 
your  wretchedness  to  be  complete  and  finished,  should  ap- 
pear to  be  only  just  begun,  and  not  ready  to  be  judged  of 
yet?  Is  there  no  consolation  in  these  great  thoughts? 
They  do  not  take  your  sorrow  off ;  and  oh,  my  deal 
friend,  whatever  be  your  suffering,  I  beg  you  to  learn  first 
of  all  tliat  not  that,  not  to  take  your  sorrow  off,  is  what 
God  means,  but  to  put  strength  into  you  that  you  may 
carry  it  as  the  tired  mai,  who  has  drunk  the  strength-giv 


112  THE   CONSOLATIONS  OF  GkOD. 

ing  river,  lifts  up  liis  burden  by  the  river-bank  and  goes 
singing  on  his  way.  Be  sure  your  sorrow  is  not  giving  j'ou 
its  best  unless  it  makes  you  a  more  thoughtful  man  than 
you  have  ever  been  before,  unless  it  opens  to  you  idvaa 
that  have  before  been  unfamiliar  ;  mostly  these  three 
ideas,  education,  spirituality,  immortality.  Those  ideas 
are  the  keys  of  all  the  mysteries  of  life,  and  so  the  gate- 
ways to  consolation.  And  it  is  wonderful  to  see  how, 
just  as  soon  as  a  man  is  really  crushed  and  sorrowful, 
God  seems  by  every  avenue  to  be  offering  those  great 
ideas  for  that  man's  acceptance.  He  seems  to  write  them 
on  the  sky,  to  whisper  them  from  every  movement  of 
the  commonest  machinery  of  life,  to  fill  books  with  them 
that  never  seemed  to  know  anything  of  them  before,  to 
make  the  vacant  house  and  the  full  grave  declare  them. 
You  are  a  child  of  God  whom  He  is  training.  You  have 
a  soul  which  is  your  true  value.  You  are  to  live  forever. 
Know  these  truths.  By  them  ti'iumph  over  the  sorrow 
that  He  cannot  take  away,  and  be  consoled. 

4.  But  even  this  is  not  all.  God  consoles  us  by  what 
He  is,  by  what  He  feels  for  us,  by  what  He  teaches  us. 
But  all  these,  as  I  tell  them  over,  seem  to  have  some- 
thing passive  about  them.  They  show  God  sitting  as  it 
were,  and  letting  His  life  flow  out  in  blessing  upon  the 
emptied  life  that  needs  Him.  But  there  is  hardly  a  suf- 
ferer who  does  not  crave  something  more  active,  if  we 
may  say  so.  He  wants  to  feel,  at  any  rate  he  thinks 
bow  blessed  it  would  be  if  he  could  feel,  God  doing  some- 
thing on  his  life,  showing  his  sympathy  by  some  strong 
act.  "  Bow  thy  heavens,  O  Lord,  and  come  down,"  he 
cries ;  "  touch  the  mountains  and  they  shall  smoke."  And 
BO  he  prays  for  God  to  help  him,  to  do  something  positive 


THE   CONSOLATIONS   OF   GOD.  113 

for  him.  What  shall  it  be?  Men  are  puzzled  a  good  dea^ 
about  prayer  nowadays.  I  suppose  a  good  many  men 
have  really  stopped  praying  for  some  things  which  tb.ey 
used  to  pray  for,  and  for  some  things  which  God  very 
much  wishes  them  to  pray  for  still.  But  the  prayer  of 
men  for  what  their  souls  will  always  count  the  greatest 
miracle  of  God,  for  spiritual  regeneration,  for  newer, 
deeper,  holier  lives,  that  prayer  has  probably  not  been 
much  affected  by  all  the  speculations  about  prayer.  It 
is  prayed  just  as  often  and  as  earnestly  as  ever,  and  so 
it  will  continue  to  be  as  long  as  men's  souls  continue  to 
bear  witness  to  the  power  and  reality  with  which  it  is 
answered.  "  Create  me  a  clean  heart,  O  God,  and  renew 
a  right  spirit  within  me."  Men  will  keep  on  praying 
that  so  long  as  they  believe  there  is  a  God,  even  if  they 
have  long  ceased  to  pray  for  the  changing  of  the  wind 
and  the  stopping  of  the  pestilence.  And  so  when  a  man 
in  trouble  prays  God  to  do  something  for  him,  this  is  the 
real  miracle  by  which  God  stands  ready  to  answer  that 
man's  prayer.  He  will  not  send  an  angel  as  He  did  to 
the  women  at  the  tomb,  but  He  will  come  Himself  and 
show  His  presence  and  His  power  by  working  the  miracle 
of  regeneration  upon  the  soul  that  has  cried  out  for  Him. 
My  dear  friends,  that  is  the  consummate  consolation ; 
everything  leads  up  to  that.  1  see  a  poor  creature  sitting 
in  sorrow.  He  catches  sight  of  God's  existence  and  he 
is  helped.  God  sends  him  assurance  of  His  sympathy, 
4nd  a  smile  finds  its  way  across  the  face  that  seemed  all 
given  up  to  sorrow,  and  looked  as  if  it  would  never  smile 
again.  God  teaches  him  His  truth,  and  the  disheartened 
heart  remembers  once  more  what  it  was  to  be  brave  and 
t 


114  THE  CONSOLATIONS   OF  GOD. 

strong,  But  then  God  comes  and  takes  that  soul,  and 
positively,  strongly  lifts  it  up  and  away  into  the  new  life« 
He  forgives  the  man  for  his  sin,  and  He  gives  him  the 
new  heart.  He  lays  the  same  strong  hand  on  him  that 
Christ  laid  upon  the  leper.  He  speaks  the  same  sweet 
word  to  him  that  Christ  spoke  to  the  adulteress.  He  for- 
gives him  and  converts  him.  He  makes  him  a  new  man  ; 
and  then,  when  the  man  stands  up  new,  no  longer 
crushed  by  his  sorrow,  and  yet  certainly,  thank  God, 
certainly,  not  having  passed  out  of  his  sorrow  !  —  but 
made  a  new  man  by  the  touch  of  God  through  his  sor- 
row, to  him,  standing  there  with  his  new  life  before  him, 
a  new  peace  in  his  face,  a  new  courage  in  his  arm,  a  new 
love  in  his  heart, — come  to  himself  as  the  new  man 
comes  by  the  sacrifice  of  himself,  —  come  to  himself  by 
having  come  to  God,  —  when  we  look  into  his  glowing 
face,  and  ask  the  old  question  that  Eliphaz  asked  of 
Job,  "Are  the  consolations  of  God  small  with  thee?" 
How  quick  and  sure  his  answer  comes  back  :  "  No,  very 
great ! "  Nay,  he  is  able  to  take  these  great  words  of 
David  which  it  is  so  terrible  to  hear  people  use  when  they 
do  not  mean  them,  and  he  fills  them  with  meaning,  as  he 
says  with  serious  joy,  "It  is  good  for  me  that  I  have  been 
afflicted." 

Are  the  consolations  of  God  small  with  thetj?  His  ex- 
istence, His  sympathy.  His  truth.  His  power.  As  I  re- 
count them  all,  it  seems  to  me  so  great  and  beautiful  to 
be  the  child  of  such  a  God.  And  pain  and  suffering 
grow  holy  when  we  think  how  through  them  the  Father 
comes  to  His  children.  Let  us  not  be  cheated  by  mere 
theories  to  say  that  sorrow  is  not  dreadfuL     Let  us  not 


THE   CONSOLATIONS   OF    GOD.  115 

fil;ini  here  in  perfect  health  with  our  unbrokeu  friend- 
bhips  and  dare  to  say  that  sickness  is  not  wearisome,  and 
bereavement  is  not  sad.  We  only  mock  the  sufferers  all 
round  us  wh(m  we  say  that.  It  is  very  cruel.  But  let 
as  claim  that  if  a  man  really  is  close  to  God  there  is  a 
victory  over  the  pain  and  a  transfiguration  of  the  sad- 
ness. "  If  a  man  is  close  to  God."  Can  we  say  that 
and  not  remember  how  the  Godhood  and  the  manhood 
met  in  the  Incarnation  ?  Can  we  say  that  and  not  re- 
member that  all  we  have  been  saying  was  supremely 
realized  when  the  Son  of  God  was  born  and  lived  and 
died  for  us  ?  God's  being  1  Who  could  doubt  it,  as  He 
walked  the  streets,  and  men  saw  God  in  His  face?  He 
brought  it  with  Him  across  the  threshold  of  the  temple, 
and  through  the  low  doorway  of  the  cottage  of  Bethany. 
God's  pity !  Who  did  not  see  it  as  He  laid  His  hands 
upon  the  children's  heads  and  looked  down,  from  the 
Mount  of  Olives,  on  Jerusalem  "^  God's  truth !  Who 
must  not  hear  it  speaking  as  He  talks  with  Nicodemus, 
or  preaches  from  the  mountain  ?  God's  power !  What 
more  has  it  any  need  of  proof,  when  the  finger  laid  upon 
the  hem  of  His  garment  gives  the  lost  health  back  again, 
when  the  death  upon  the  cross  is  the  salvation  of  the 
world  ?  All  that  there  is  consolatory  in  God,  —  being 
sympathy,  truth,  power,  —  Christ  has  set  in  the  clearness 
and  the  splendor  of  His  life. 

And  so  if  you  want  consolation  you  must  come  to  Him. 
It  is  not  a  dead  phrase.  It  was  not  dead  when  He  spoke 
It  first  in  Jerusalem,  and  said  "  Come  to  me."  It  was  the 
very  word  of  life.  You  must  come  to  Him,  know  Him, 
love  Him,  serve  Him.    In  His  church  and  His  service  yoa 


116  THE  CONSOLATIONS   OF  GOD. 

must  take  your  place.  Nay,  let  us  not  say  "  must."  Oui 
duties  are  always  best  stated  as  our  privileges.  You  may 
come  to  Him,  for  He  has  said,  "  Come  unto  me  all  ye  that 
are  weary  and  heavy  laden,  and  I  will  give  you  rest' 
May  we  all  come  nearer  and  nearer  to  Him  always^  aa*? 
find  peaoe. 


vn. 

ALL   SAINTS'   DAI. 

"After  this  I  beheld,  and  lo,  a  great  maltitnde,  which  no  m&n  ooilU 
aomber,  of  all  nations,  and  kindreds,  and  people,  and  tongues,  stood  before 
:be  throne,  and  before  the  Lamb,  clothed  with  white  robes,  and  palms  in 
their  hands ;  and  cried  with  a  loud  voice,  saying.  Salvation  to  our  God 
which  sitteth  upon  the  throne,  and  unto  the  Lamb."  —  Rey.  vii.  9,  10. 

In  the  calendar  of  the  Church  to-day  is  set  apart  to  be 
celebrated  as  All  Saints'  Day.  Besides  the  special  com- 
memorations of  particular  saints,  as  St.  Peter  and  St. 
John,  one  day  is  given  to  the  commemoration  of  the 
great  general  idea  of  Sainthood.  It  seems  to  gather  in 
all  the  multitude  of  the  holy,  in  every  age,  and  bids  us 
think  of  their  characters  and  follow  in  their  steps.  Ita 
Collect  prays  that  "we  may  so  follow  God's  blessed  Saints 
in  all  virtuous  and  godly  living,  that  we  may  come  to 
those  unspeakable  joys  which  He  has  prepared  for  those 
who  unfeignedly  love  Him."  This  idea  of  one  life  follow- 
ing after  and  strengthening  itself  by  another  life  which 
has  gone  before  it  seems  to  be  the  great  idea  of  All 
Saints'  Day,  and  to  this  I  invite  your  study  to-night.  It 
opens  wide  subjects  of  religion  and  of  life. 

What  is  there  in  the  world  for  each  of  us  that  would 
not  be  here  if  others  had  not  lived  before  us,  if  we  were 
the  first  generation  that  ever  peopled  this  populous  earth 
of  ours  ?  What  are  the  legacies  that  the  past  sends  down 
to  us  ?   Let  us  see.    First,  there  are  certain  circum9*ancea, 


118  ALL  saints'   day. 

such  as  government  and  society,  social  improvements,  cil^ 
ies,  and  railroads,  and  houses,  all  art,  all  the  furniture 
and  tools  of  life.  All  these  things  men  have  gradually, 
in  the  course  of  ages,  invented  and  worked  out,  and  they 
Eire  permanent,  and  have  come  down  to  us  in  their  accu' 
mulation.  All  that  makes  earth  something  else  than  a 
primeval  wilderness  when  we  step  into  it,  —  all  this  ia 
the  great  bequest  of  circumstances.  Then,  besides  these, 
there  are  certain  truths ;  all  the  knowledge  that  man  has 
ever  won,  of  physics,  of  metaphysics,  of  morals,  of  relig- 
ion, of  beauty,  —  all  this  we  have  not  to  win  over  again 
for  ourselves.  The  truths  come  down  to  us  all  found, 
and  we  have  only  to  take  them  and  use  them.  Certain 
circumstances  then  and  certain  truths.  These  are  great 
legacies  surely.  But,  beside  these,  there  is  another  gift 
—  of  certain  inspirations  which  we  find  waiting  for  us  in 
the  world.  Men  have  left  behind  them  not  only  the  sys- 
tems and  structures  that  they  built,  and  the  truths  that 
they  discovered,  but  their  examples,  their  enthusiasms, 
and  their  standards.  The  impulse  and  contagion  of  their 
work  is  waiting  everywhere  to  breathe  itself  into  ours. 
A  thousand  incentives  to  use  the  circumstances  and  to 
learn  the  truths,  a  thousand  impulses  to  action  press  on 
the  new-born  life  out  of  the  past.  The  men  who  are 
gone  seem  to  have  left  behind  them  in  the  world  much 
of  their  power  of  vitality ;  and  I  suppose  hardly  a  day 
passes  in  which  we  do  not  do  some  act,  small  or  great, 
under  this  kind  of  inspiration  from  our  predecessors, 
something  that  we  should  not  have  done,  or  should  have 
done  differently,  if,  even  with  all  the  machinery  of  liv- 
ing and  all  the  truths  that  we  know  now,  we  had  had  no 
predecessors,  had  been  the  first  tenants  of  our  earth. 


ALL  SAOTTS'  DAT.  119 

The  power  of  this  inspiration  comes  in  various  ways. 
In  some  degree  it  is  the  mere  force  of  hereditation.  Som« 
tastes  and  tendencies  we  get  in  our  very  blood,  just  aa 
we  get  the  shape  of  our  features  or  the  color  of  our  eyes. 
This  of  course  confines  the  influence  to  a  very  narrow 
range.  Then  there  is  the  distinct  power  of  example. 
We  see  that  other  men  have  done  certain  things,  and 
that  they  turned  out  well,  and  we  say  we  will  do  the 
same.  Our  forefathers  have  set  the  step  for  the  great 
journey  of  life ;  they  have  found  out  where  the  quag- 
mires and  where  the  solid  ground  is  likeliest  to  lie,  and 
we  cannot  do  better  than  follow  in  their  steps.  But  be- 
sides and  above  all  these,  they  have  set  up  certain  ideals 
of  character,  not  reducible  to  precise  rules  of  action,  with 
which  we  enter  into  sympathy,  and  to  whose  likeness  our 
lives  almost  unconsciously  attempt  to  shape  themselves. 

This  power  of  influence  may  belong  to  all  the  past  in 
general.  Out  of  all  the  living  that  men  have  done  what 
young  man  has  not  seen  gather  one  complete  and  total 
image  of  what  the  human  life  should  be  ?  From  all  the 
multitude  of  failures  and  successes  rises  up  the  picture  of 
a  true,  successful  manhood,  —  the  perfect  man.  That  is 
our  leader.  Not  in  any  special  man,  but  generally,  this 
ideal  of  manhood  tempts  and  inspires  and  entices  us  to 
action. 

Or  yet  again  we  see  that  power  incorporate  itself  in 
»ome  great  man.  Dead  or  alive,  past  or  contemporary, 
aome  mighty  character  stands  out  and  says,  "  Come,  fol- 
low me ; "  and  who  can  explain  the  subtle  fascination  that 
reaches  everywhere,  and  lays  hold  of  all  kinds  of  men, 
and  turns  their  lives  out  of  their  course  to  follow  his 
course ;  to  be  with  him  in  some  sympathy  of  purpose, 


120  ALL  SAINTS'   DAT. 

and,  if  possible,  to  be  like  him  in  some  similarity  of  nat- 
ure? "  As  I  take  it,"  says  Carlyle,  "  Universal  History, 
the  history  of  what  man  has  accomplished  in  this  world, 
is  at  bottom  the  history  of  the  great  men  who  have 
worked  here.  '  So  all  absorbing  seems  in  his  philosophy 
the  laadership  of  the  leaders. 

We  may  go  farther  than  this,  and  analyze  the  power 
of  leadership  that  great  men  have.  It  is  of  three  kinds. 
It  may  rest  in  either  of  three  things  :  1st.  It  may  be  iv 
mere  strength  of  personality.  Mere  strong  individual- 
ity, showing  itself  in  any  act  of  prowess,  attracts  men 
and  influences  them.  In  this  case  the  leader  is  what  we 
call  a  hero, — a  Charlemagne  or  Napoleon  or  Cassar.  Or, 
2d.  It  may  be  in  some  truths  that  he  teaches.  The  leader 
may  lead  men  by  the  power  of  ideas,  of  superior  knowl- 
edge. Then  the  leader  is  a  teacher.  Such  leaders  were 
Plato  and  Shakespeare  and  Bacon.  Or,  3d,  and  above 
all,  it  may  be  in  a  certain  thing  which  we  call  holiness, 
which  we  cannot  define  otherwise  than  that  it  is  a  larger 
and  more  manifest  presence  of  God  in  the  life  of  one  man 
than  other  men  have,  —  more  sympathetic  nearness  to 
Divinity,  which  makes  men  feel  that  he,  more  than  they, 
embodies  the  Divine  Spirit  and  utters  the  Divine  will ; 
that  he  shows  God  to  them.  This  is  the  leadership  of 
the  saint.  These  are  the  three  :  the  hero,  the  teacher, 
and  the  saint.  These  are  the  leaders,  the  inspirers  of 
men.  To  each  of  these  we  attach  ourselves,  and  draw 
out  strength  from  them ;  strength  for  action  from  the 
hero,  strength  for  thought  from  the  teacher,  strength  for 
piety  and  goodness  from  the  saint. 

We  have  reached  then  this  distinctive  definition  of  the 
saint.     He  is  the  man  whose  power  comes  of  his  holi- 


ALL  SAINTS'  DAT.  121 

i^ess,  —  of  his  godlikeness.     It  is  a  special  kind  of  power  ; 
and   it  is  the  strongest  kind  of  power  where  it  can  be 
brought  to  bear  at  all.     It  must  be  so  because  religion  is 
the  profoundest  interest  of  our  nature,  and  religious  as- 
sociation and  religious  admiration  lay  mightier  hold  oi 
m  than  any  other.     There  is  an  attitude  which  man  as- 
sumes toward  God  different  from  that  which  he  can  take 
toward  any  of  his  fellow-beings.     Now  in  the  hero  man 
feels  that  there  is  something  of  God's  power,  but  by  no 
means,   of  necessity,  any  of   God  Himself.     All   power 
comes  from  God  ;  but,  horribly  misused  and  perverted  as 
it  often  is,  no  man  can  fall  down  in  adoration  before  the 
violent  destruotiveness  of  strong  personality  as  it  shows 
■  itself   in    a   Ctesar  or   an  Attila.       And   in  the  teacher 
there  is  God's  truth,  because  all  truth  is  God's,  but  the 
teacher   is   only  the  glass    through  which  it  shines;   at 
best  the  glass  which  condenses  and  applies  its  rays ;  and 
everybody  feels  that  it  is  the  light   and   not  the  glass 
which  he  must  worship.     But  in  the  saint,  in  the  embod- 
iment of  holiness  among  men,  there  is  something  more 
than  the  mere  power  or  the  mere  truth  of   God.     Here 
is    something  of  God  Himself,    a  real  abiding  presence 
of  divinity  ;  and  the  attitude  which  the  observer  takes 
towards  Him  has  somewhat  of  the  character  with  which 
he  bows  himself  even  before  God.     The  hero  demands 
astonished  admiration  ;  the  teacher  challenges  obedient 
revere  ice;    but   the   saint   wins   a   sympathetic,   loving 

awe. 

It  is  not  easy  to  make  this  plain  in  definitions,  but 
whbn  you  call  up  your  experience,  I  am  sure  that  you 
must  understand  me.  A  purely  good  man,  a  holy  man, 
a  man  whose  life  and  nature  you  saw  always  luminous 


122  ALL  SAINTS*  DAT. 

with  the  presence  of  God  in  every  thought  and  act  and 
word,  —  have  you  never  been  conscious  of  some  powei 
in  his  presence ;  or  if  he  were  dead,  of  some  power  in 
the  image  of  what  he  was  that  grew  up  in  you  as  yon 
read  or  heard  about  him,  utterly  anlike  that  which  far 
greater  men  had  over  you.  He  was  no  hero  and  no 
teacher.  You  felt  no  wonder  at  his  ability,  and  found 
no  intellectual  delight  in  what  he  told  you,  but  he 
brought  God  close  to  you.  Why,  I  know  books  vivid 
with  such  a  life  into  which  one  steps  as  into  the  prea- 
ence  of  God.  I  have  seen  rooms  where  such  men  oi 
such  women,  weak  and  ignorant  perhaps,  were  breathing 
out  their  long  days  of  suffering,  which  were  very  Holies 
of  Holies.  They  conducted  divinity  wonderfully.  They 
made  God  real,  and  interpreted  Him  with  something  of 
the  power  of  the  incarnate  deity  of  Christ. 

I  am  anxious  to  connect  our  whole  notion  of  sainthood 
with  this  idea  of  power.  Saints,  as  we  often  think  of 
them,  are  feeble,  nerveless  creatures,  silly  and  effeminate, 
the  mere  soft  padding  of  the  universe.  I  would  present 
true  sainthood  to  you  as  the  strong  chain  of  God's 
presence  in  humanity  running  down  through  all  history, 
and  making  of  it  a  unity,  giving  it  a  large  and  massive 
strength  able  to  bear  great  things  and  to  do  great  things 
too.  This  unity  which  the  line  of  sainthood  gives  to 
history  is  the  great  point  that  shows  its  strength.  You 
go  to  your  saint  and  find  God  working  and  manifest  in 
him.  He  got  near  to  God  by  some  saint  of  his  that 
went  before  him,  or  that  stood  beside  him,  m  whom  he 
saw  the  Divine  presence.  That  saint  again  lighted  his 
fire  at  some  flame  before  him  ;  and  so  the  power  of  the 
■ainthoods  animates  and  fills  the  world.     So  holiness  and 


ALL  saints'   day.  12i 

purity,  and  truth  and  patience,  daring  and  tenderness, 
hope  and  faith,  are  kept  constant  and  pervading  things 
in  our  humanity.  Each  man  has  not  to  begin  and  work 
them  out  from  the  beginning  for  himself.  So  there  is 
a  church  of  God  as  well  as  souls  of  God  in  the  earth. 
This  is  the  truth  of  All  Saints. 

And  in  this  truth  we  get  the  great  corrective  that  we 
need  of  the  continual  tendency  to  solitariness  and  indi- 
viduality in  our  religion.     This  church  of  all  the  saints 
is  a  great  power  in  the  world.     Every  true  servant  of 
God  must  belong  with  this  mighty  service  of  God  ;  must 
get  his  strength  through  it,  and  contribute  his  strength 
into  it.    Ever  from  out  the  past,  from  the  old  saints  who 
lived  in  other  times,  from  Enoch,  David,  Paul,  and  John, 
Augustine,  Jerome,  Luther,  Leighton,  there  comes  down 
the  power  of  God  to  us.     Because  they  were  full  of  it, 
we,  by  association  with  them,  grow  fuller  of  it  than  we 
could  be  by  ourselves.     Our  reverence  and  love  for  them 
becomes  akin  to,  and  bears  like  fruit  in  us  with  our  rev- 
erence and  love  for  God.     Our  faith  mounts  up  with 
their  exultant  prayers.     Our  weak  devotion,  tired  and 
drooping,  rests  against  the  strong  pillars  of  their  certain 
trust.     Their  quick  sight  teaches  our  half- opened  eyes 
the  way  to  look  toward  the  light  that  shall  unseal  them 
wholly.     How  large  a  part  of  our  godward  life  is  trav- 
elled not  by  clear  landmarks  seen  far  off  in  the  promised 
land,  but  as  travellers  climb  a  mountain  peak,  by  put- 
ting footstep  after  footstep  slowly  and  patiently  into  the 
prints  which  some  one  going  before  us,  with  keener  sight, 
with  stronger  nerves,  tied  to  us  by  the  cord  of  saintly 
sympathy,  has  planted  deep  into  the  pathless  snow  of 
the  bleak  distance  that  stretches  up  between  humanity 


124  ALL  SAINTS'   DAY. 

and  God.  Take  away  holy  example  and  the  inspiration 
of  holy  men  (and  that  I  would  call  destroying  the 
church,  not  the  breaking  to  pieces  of  any  external  sys- 
tem, for  that  is  the  true  apostolical  saintly  succession,  the 
tactual  succession  of  heart  touching  heart  with  fire)  ;  take 
that  away  and  you  would  depopulate  heaven.  Only  one 
bold,  supreme  soul  here  and  there  would  still  be  able  to 
acale  the  height  alone,  and  stand  triumphant  in  the  glo- 
rious presence  of  God.  And  who  can  say  what  distor- 
tion and  lack  of  symmetry  there  might  be  in  its  eternal 
'.•haracter  by  the  solitariness  of  its  sti'uggles.  So  we  as- 
cend by  one  another.  We  live  by  one  another's  bless- 
ings, as  we  die  by  one  another's  cursings.  No  man  liveth 
to  himself,  and  no  man  dieth  to  himself.  We  live  and 
die  not  only  to  God  but  to  each  other. 

And  yet  remember  what  we  said  about  these  saints 
who  help  us  on  our  way.  They  were  incorporations,  not 
of  the  power,  nor  of  the  truth,  but  of  the  spirit  or  the 
character  of  God.  Not  heroes  nor  teachers,  but  distinctly 
saints.  Now  in  God  Himself  all  three,  power  and  truth 
and  character,  must  go  together  ;  all  must  be  perfect  in 
their  perfect  union  in  Him.  And  so  they  will,  to  some 
extent,  in  the  saint,  who  is  God's  copy ;  but  not  entirely. 
The  saint  is  God's  child  ;  and  the  child  has  the  father's 
character,  but  not  his  truth  or  his  power.  You  are  in- 
terested and  inspired  very  likely  when  you  see  the  child 
of  a  yery  great  man  showing  his  father's  qualities,  inter- 
preting his  father  to  you,  bringing  you  near  to  him  ;  but 
you  do  not  look  to  see  the  child  of  Csesar  conquering  an- 
other empire,  or  the  child  of  Shakespeare  writing  another 
Hamlet.  You  are  surprised  if  he  has  not  his  father's 
character.  You  are  surprised  if  he  has  his  father's  talAut 
or  his  father's  knowledge 


ALL   saints'   DAT.  125 

This  is  important.  The  Romanist  thinks  that  his 
gaints  must  have  some  power  of  miracle.  It  is  not 
en  "Ugh  for  him  that  they  were  good  godlike  men  and 
women,  manifesting  God  in  daily  duty  and  the  patient 
devotion  of  holy  lives.  His  Blessed  Virgin,  and  St. 
Peter  and  St.  James,  St.  Joseph,  St.  Catharine,  St. 
Jerome,  and  the  rest,  must  heal  the  sick,  and  raise  the 
dead,  and  tread  on  serpents,  and  wield  the  power  of 
divinity  over  the  forces  of  nature,  and  help  men  in  their 
business,  or  they  are  no  saints.  Mere  holiness  is  not 
enough.  God's  power  in  their  acts,  as  well  as  God 
Himself  in  their  characters,  seems  to  him  necessary. 
And  so  we  are  overwhelmed  with  the  torrent  of  stories 
of  miracles  of  the  saints,  hung  on  improbably  onto 
their  lives,  and  hiding  from  us  with  their  great  misty 
halo  of  uncertainty  the  really  certain  holiness  and  noble- 
ness of  the  great  men  and  women  who  adorn  the  books 
of  sainthood.  And  so  he  who  believes  those  stories 
easily  pauses  at  such  near  and  convenient  repositories 
of  power,  between  himself  and  God,  asks  his  blessing  of 
his  familiar  saint,  not  of  his  unfamiliar  deity,  and  so  is 
renlly  not  helped  nearer  to  God,  but  kept  farther  away 
from  God  by  his  saints.     This  is  the  practical  working. 

And  not  only  among  Romanists,  but  among  some 
schools  of  Protestants,  especially,  perhaps,  in  our  own 
church,  there  is  another  error  of  essentially  the  same  char^ 
acter  as  this,  that  is  always  hampering  the  freedom  of 
Christian  life  and  the  progress  of  Christian  truth.  We 
have  seen  that  godliness  of  character  ought  not  neces- 
sarily to  be  supposed  to  imply  the  possession  of  divine 
miraculous  power.  But  surely  it  is  just  as  true  that  it 
doea  not  imply  any  sort  of  miraculous  di  ine  knowledge, 


126  ALL  saints'  DAT. 

or  wisdom  either.  That  poor  saintly  ■woman  hy  whos« 
hovel  bedside  you  go  and  sit,  and  rise  up  edified  and 
strengthened,  feeling  that  you  have  been  very  near  to 
G'>d,  it  matters  noth'.ng  to  you  that  she  is  very  ignorant* 
that  you  would  not  value  her  opinion  on  any  knotty  point 
of  history,  or  doctrine,  or  economy.  What  have  you  to 
do  with  those  things,  sitting  there  by  her.  The  head  mo- 
nopolizes life.  It  has  more  than  its  share  of  treasuries  to 
draw  on,  and  fountains  to  drink  from,  in  the  world.  It 
is  the  poor  heart,  so  often  half-starved  and  thirsty,  that 
is  getting  sweet  refreshment  as  you  sit  and  draw  it  from 
the  rich  godliness  of  the  suffering  saint.  Now  make  this 
wider.  Back  in  the  history  of  the  Christian  Church  runs 
the  long  pedigree  of  saintship  which  I  have  tried  to 
paint  before  you.  Age  after  age  the  qualities  of  God 
have  been  taken  up  into  the  holy  lives  of  men ;  and 
honoring  this  truth  of  the  perpetuated  grace  and  holinesa 
of  the  continual  church,  we  call  those  great  religious  men 
who  stand  out  in  the  several  ages  high  above  all  the  rest, 
the  Fathers.  There  are  the  fathers  of  Primitive  Chris- 
tianity, the  fathers  of  the  Reformation,  the  fathers  of  the 
English  Church,  the  fathers  of  our  own  American  Epis- 
copacy. We  hear  much  in  these  days  about  the  Fathers 
and  their  authority.  There  are  some  men  who  would 
'3oordinate  their  teaching  with  that  of  the  New  Testa- 
ment, with  Christ's  and  the  Apostles'.  But  if  what  W6 
have  said  be  true,  is  it  not  evident  that  however  deeply 
we  may  reverence,  however  we  may  be  illuminated  by 
the  sweet  or  splendid  piety  of  those  old  men  of  God, 
there  is  no  true  presumption  of  any  infallible  wisdom,  or 
an^  Inspired  knowledge  in  them,  that  should  make  either 
their  views  of  truth,  or  their  laws  of  church  regulation, 


ALL  SAINTS     DAT.  127 

the  necessary  standards  for  our  thought  and  action. 
Wise  men,  wonderful  men,  many  of  them  most  certainly 
were ;  and  on  the  other  hand  many  of  them  always,  and 
almost  all  of  them  sometimes,  wrote  and  talked  puerilitiea 
and  blunders,  which  are  not  strange  when  we  consider 
the  times  in  which  they  lived,  but  which  compel  us  to 
believe  that  their  reliableness  as  teachers  must  be  tested 
by  the  ordinary  laws  by  which  we  try  all  our  teachers, 
and  that  they  are  to  be  believed  only  as  they  convince 
our  reason,  or  conform  to  that  higher  authority  of  revela- 
tion which  both  they  and  we  allow.  From  the  substance 
of  a  doctrine  down  to  the  size  of  a  diocese,  or  the  color  of 
a  stole,  men  quote  the  Fathers  of  Nice  and  Alexandria 
and  Rome.  Others  will  tell  us  that  just  in  this  shape 
the  truth  of  justification  must  be  always  held  because 
Luther  or  Calvin  taught  it  so.  The  Prayer-book  of  the 
English  Reformers,  and  its  adaptation  by  the  first  bishops 
of  our  own  church,  is  clothed,  by  some  people,  with  almost 
superstitious  sanctity,  as  if  to  alter  any  jot  or  tittle  in  it 
were  a  sacrilege.  This  is  not  well.  These  men  are  pat- 
terns for  our  piety,  not  tyrants  of  our  thought  or  action. 
They  mado  mistakes  in  ritual  and  government  and  doc- 
trine. And  the  old  times  in  which  they  lived  asked  of 
them  shapes  of  outward  Christian  life  and  church  organi- 
zation, which  the  same  live  religion  that  made  them  create 
them  orders  us  to  change.  It  is  their  holy  temper  that 
consecrates  them  to  us.  It  is  their  godliness  that  makes 
them  great.  In  that  runs  the  true  chain  of  sainthood, 
linking  the  ages  together  and  making  the  eternal  unity 
of  the  church.  Oh,  there  have  been  great  souls  behind  ua, 
brethren.  The  stream  of  truth  may  widen  as  the  years 
toll  on,  and  sweep  us  into  harbors  of  thought  and  knowl- 


128  ALL  saints'   DAT. 

edge  of  which  they  nevei  dreamed.  We  may  unlearn 
things  that  they  thought  were  certainties,  and  take  for  sure 
truths  what  they  would  have  turned  from  as  the  wildest 
dreams.  On  the  one  rock  we  may  build  structures  of  an- 
other shape  from  theirs.  But  does  that  make  us  greater 
than  tley  were  ?  Does  it  authorize  us  to  be  contemptuous 
and  cast  them  off  as  useless  ?  Has  your  mere  schoolboy  a 
right  to  say  that  he  is  greater  than  Plato,  because  he  lives 
in  a  house  full  of  luxuries,  and  can  tell  you  of  opinions  in 
which  Plato  was  mistaken,  and  knows  facts  that  Plato 
never  dreamed  of.  Put  them  in  their  true  place,  and 
the  Fathers  are  mighty.  We  bow  before  them  as  they 
stand  through  history  and  win  their  blessing.  Let  them 
not  be  made  despots  over  us,  and  I  will  praise  them  with 
the  loudest.  A  poor  extemporized  thing  the  church  would 
be  without  them.  If  we  learn  more  than  they  knew,  we 
still  owe  it  all  to  them,  for  we  learn  it  all  in  the  direc- 
tions which  their  devout  and  faithful  lives  first  indicated. 
We  learn  of  God  when  we  look  steadily  at  them,  and 
thank  Him  for  the  blessing  of  the  saints  and  fathers. 

I  have  been  anxious  to  point  this  out,  this  absence  of 
power  of  miracle,  or  of  authority  in  truth  in  the  saints 
of  the  Christian  Church,  because  we  must  have  some  doc- 
trine of  the  sainthood  which  shall  not  for  a  moment  dim 
or  distort  the  leadership  and  perfect  headship  of  the  chris- 
tian, and  the  church  which  rests  in  Christ  alone.  He 
must  do  all  our  great  works  for  us,  and  teach  us  all  our 
great  lessons.  Better  that  the  whole  calendar  were  swept 
away  and  every  saint  forgotten,  than  that  one  of  them 
should  take  anything  from  that  perfect  prerogative  of 
•aviorship  which  is  the  Saviour's  own.  But  this  need 
oot  be.     Christ,  as  He  leads  us  on  to  higher  thingp,  m»y 


ALL   SAINTS"    DAY.  129 

Btill  strengtLen  us  with  the  company  of  those  who  have 
the  same  road  to  travel,  and  are  walking  it  iu  the  same 
strength.  It  surely  does  not  lessen  Christ  to  me  as  the 
supporter  of  my  sickness,  when  on  my  sick-bed  I  call  up 
the  image  of  some  sufferer  of  old,  and  see  him  patient  iu 
the  power  of  a  divine  sympathy,  which  then  I  reach  out 
and  cry  after  with  all  the  more  certain  assurance  for  my- 
seK.  Christ  is  more  utterly  my  sole  resource  in  strong 
temptation,  the  only  Being  I  can  flee  to,  when  I  see 
strong  men  of  the  saintly  histories  turned  into  weakness 
before  the  power  of  evil,  and  fleeing  in  desperation  to 
that  same  Christ,  to  be  restrengthened  with  a  higher 
power  than  the  old.  There  is  a  use  of  the  saints  that 
can  make  Christ  nearer,  clearer,  dearer  to  our  souls. 
They  may  be  like  a  mere  atmosphere  between  our  souls 
and  Him,  whose  every  particle,  filled  with  Him,  has  passed 
on  his  life  to  the  next  particle,  and  so  at  last  sent  him 
down  to  us  pure,  as  He  is,  uncolored  with  its  own  blue- 
ness,  the  "  light  that  hghteth  every  man,"  lighting  us  all 
the  more  brightly  because  it  has  lighted  them. 

We  have  been  speaking  almost  altogether  of  the  saints 
of  old  times.  But  our  subject  is  "  All  Saints."  The 
question  comes  then,  are  there  no  saints  to-day  ?  Has 
the  race  run  out,  or  is  there  such  a  thing  as  a  modern 
samt  ?  Yes,  surely,  I  reply.  If  sainthood  means  what  we 
have  said,  the  indwelling,  the  manifest  indwelling  of  God 
in  man,  then  there  must  be  many  a  very  saintly  saint 
n  these  late  days  of  ours.  We  can  well  conceive  in- 
aeed  that  there  may  be  fewer  supreme  preeminent  saints, 
fewer  outreaching  pinnacles  of  grace  in  the  long  ranges  of 
spiritual  life.  There  does  seem  to  be  sometMng  arbitrary 
in  our  modern  canonizations,  both  Protestar  t  and  Romisbf 

9 


180  ALL  saints'  DAT. 

Bome  absence  cf  reason  why  this  or  that  one  should  b« 
chosen  for  the  aureole  or  the  biography,  more  than  a 
multitude  of  others  who  seemed  quite  as  manifestly  full 
of  God  as  he.  This  is  conceivable.  As  all  civilization 
and  human  culture  advances,  great  men  become  less  com- 
mon and  less  marked.  As  the  general  level  rises  the 
mountain-tops  are  less  prominent.  And  so  as  the  pres- 
ence of  God  in  humanity  becomes  more  visible  every- 
where (and  in  spite  of  all  men  say,  I  believe  there  never 
has  been  a  time  whose  large  spiritual  level  was  so  high  as 
that  in  which  we  thank  God  that  we  live),  as  spirituality 
grows  more  common  the  sainthoods  stand  out  less  marked 
from  their  surroundings.  It  is  conceivable  that  a  time  of 
such  general  elevation  may  come,  in  this  world  or  another, 
that  the  promontories  shall  be  all  lost  in  the  lofty  table- 
land of  millennial  goodness  and  nobleness. 

Still  there  are  saints  enough  if  we  only  know  how  to 
^nd  them.  The  result  of  what  I  have  just  spoken  of  will 
be  that  all  saintliness  now  will  have  less  a  miraculous 
and  strange  appearance,  will  far  more  blend  in  with  and 
manifest  itself  through  the  channels  of  the  most  familiar 
life.  The  old  idea  of  sainthood  demanded  miracles  of 
those  whom  it  admitted  to  its  calendars.  The  Church 
of  Rome  still  makes  the  same  demand.  All  makes  the 
sainthood  an  exceptional,  irregular,  unusual  thing.  We 
cannot  surely  think  that  this  idea  has  anything  like  the 
real  nobleness  of  that  other  which  conceives  that  the 
highest  holiness  will  not  work  miracles,  but  only  do  its 
duty ;  will  busy  itself,  not  with  unusual,  but  with  famil 
iar  things,  and  make  itself  manifest,  not  in  prodigies,  but 
in  the  ordinary  duties  of  a  common  life. 

Indeed  to  ask  for  miracles,  as   exhibitors  of  charao- 


ALL  saints'  DAT.  131 

ter,  is  always  the  sign  of  feeble  insight  and  feeble  faith, 
rhe  true  father  does  not  ask  his  son  for  prodigies  of 
submission  to  approve  his  filial  loyalty.     He  sees  it  in 
the  hourly  look  and  walk  of  obedience.     The  headstrong 
Pharaoh  could  not  see  God  until  He  showed  Himself  in 
the  ten  plagues.     The  loving  David  saw  God  in  the  quiet 
guidance  of  his  daily  life.    "  By  Thee  have  I  been  holden 
up  from  the  womb,"  he  says.     I  have  been  struck  by 
a  fine  instance  of  this  discernment  of  God,  not  in  mira- 
cles, but  in  the  ordinary  course  of  providence,  which  oc- 
curs in  the  history  of  Martin  Luther.    It  was  a  time  when 
things  were  going  very  hard  with  him,  a  time  when  all 
the  human  props  of  the  Reformation  seemed  ready  to  fall 
away.     It  was  then  that  "  I  saw  not  long  since,"  cried 
Luther,  "  a  sign  in  the  heavens."     Then  you  begin  to 
listen  for  some  startling  prodigy.     A  falling  star,  a  pil- 
lar of  fire,  a  blazing  cross  held  out  against  the  sky.     Cer- 
tainly some  miracle  is  coming.    But  hear  what  does  come. 
"  I  was  looking  out  of  my  window  at  night,  and  beheld 
the  stars,  and  the  whole  majestic  vault  of  God,  held  up 
without  my  being  able  to  see  the  pillars  on  which  the 
Master  had  caused  it  to  rest.    Men  fear  that  the  sky  may 
fall.     Poor  fools !     Is  not  God  always  there  ?  "     That  is 
all.     That  is  his  "sign  in  the  heavens."    It  is  a  miracle; 
but  only  that  old  miracle  that  has  been  shown  nightly 
since  the  heavens  and  the  stars  were  made,  that  you  and 
I  will  see  when  we  go  out  to-night.     The  eye  that  seea 
God  there  is  more  clear  and  more  blessed  than  the  eye 
that  has  to  be  scared  into  seeing  Him  by  lightnings  and 
by  firebrands.     It  is  not,  if  we  understand  it  rightly,  a 
sign  of  decreasing,  but  of  increasing  spirituality,  that 
miracles  have  ceased.     And  so  it  is  a  truer  discrimination 


132  ALL  saints'  day. 

that  recognizes  the  presences  of  God  in  men,  the  sainta 
that  are  in  the  world,  not  by  the  miracles  they  work  but 
by  the  miracles  they  are,  by  the  way  in  which  they  bring 
the  grace  of  God  to  bear  on  the  simple  duties  of  the 
household  and  the  street.  The  sainthoods  of  the  fireside 
and  of  the  market-place  —  they  wear  no  glory  round  their 
heads  ;  they  do  their  duties  in  the  strength  of  God  ;  they 
have  their  martyrdoms  and  win  their  palms,  and  though 
they  get  into  no  calendars,  they  leave  a  benediction  and 
a  force  behind  them  on  the  earth  when  they  go  up  to 
heaven. 

Every  time  that  we  say  our  Creed,  to-night,  for  in- 
stance, we  profess  that  we  "  believe  in  the  commun- 
ion of  saints."  I  hope  that  all  which  we  have  said 
has  made  it  a  little  clearer  to  us  what  is  the  meaning 
of  that  article  of  faith.  All  the  souls,  everywhere,  in 
whom  God  dwells,  dwell  together  in  virtue  of  that  oc- 
cupation. They  may  be  separated  very  far.  They  may 
not  know  each  other's  tongue.  The  Divine  presence 
in  them  may  take  the  most  utterly  various  forms  of 
expression.  Their  works  in  life  may  be  entirely  dis- 
tinct. All  these  are  things  external.  They  live  to- 
gether as  they  both  abide  in  God.  The  symbols  of 
that  inner  life  are  many ;  the  multitudinous  life  itself  is 
one.  I  have  preached  of  the  saint  as  leader.  This  arti- 
cle of  the  Creed  brings  in  a  higher  thought,  —  the  saint 
as  brother  and  companion.  It  is  a  higher  aspect  of 
the  same  thought,  rather,  for  the  two  are  really  one. 
The  highest  leadership  does  not  stand  above  its  flock  to 
rule  them.  It  comes  down  among  them,  and  is  one  of 
them.  And  the  completest  brotherhood  is  not  mere 
company ;  it  aids  and  feeds  and  ministers  to  its  brethren. 


ALL   SAINTS'    DAT.  133 

It  is  leadership  also.  So  that  the  leader  is  the  brother, 
and  the  brother  is  the  leader,  and  saint  is  both  to  saint. 
The  communion  of  saints  is  a  mutual  ministry  of  saints. 
It  is  a  noble  thing  to  think  of.  Here,  and  in  the  antip- 
Ddea  here,  and  in  regions  of  thought  and  culture  utterly 
eetrsmged  from  ours  ;  here,  and  in  the  lordliest  cathedral 
and  the  lowliest  camp-meeting ;  here,  and  in  sick-rooms, 
in  prisons,  in  poor-houses,  in  palaces,  the  great  commun- 
ion reaches.  The  Holy  Catholic  Church,  the  Communion 
of  Saints !  Wherever  men  are  praying,  loving,  trust- 
ing, seeking  and  finding  God,  it  is  a  true  body  with  all 
its  ministries  of  part  to  part.  Nay,  shall  we  stop  at  that 
poor  line,  the  grave,  which  all  our  Christianity  is  always 
trying  to  wipe  out  and  make  nothing  of,  and  which  we 
always  insist  on  widening  into  a  great  gulf  ?  Shall  we 
not  stretch  our  thought  beyond,  and  feel  the  life-blood  of 
this  holy  church,  this  living  body  of  Christ,  pulsing  out 
into  the  saints  who  are  living  there,  and  coming  back 
throbbing  with  tidings  of  their  glorious  and  sympathetic 
life.  It  is  the  very  power  of  this  truth  of  ours  to-day^ 
that  it  lays  hold  on  immortality.  It  leaps  the  gulf  of 
death.  David  and  Peter,  part  of  the  same  body  with  us, 
already  prophesy  to  us,  the  more  sluggish  and  tardy 
members,  of  the  great  things  that  are  before  us,  the  final 
bright  outcome  of  the  struggle  in  which  we  are  still  so 
blindly  toiling  on ;  as  the  eager  eyes  send  messages  down 
to  the  slow  laboring  feet,  of  the  green,  soft  fields  before, 
on  which  they  are  already  feasting,  and  on  which,  after  a 
little  more  plodding  toil,  the  tired  feet  shall  rest.  What 
we  know  of  Christ  becomes  in  some  measure  the  prop- 
erty of  all. 


ia4  ALL   SAINTS'  DAT. 

Augels,  and  living  sainte,  and  dead. 

But  one  commnnion  make : 
All  join  in  Christ,  their  vital  head, 

And  of  Hie  love  partake. 

The  tnie  church,  the  only  church  worth  living  m  ot 
fighting  for,  is  this  communion  of  saints.  It  is  the  an- 
■wer  to  the  Saviour's  prayer, "  I  in  them  and  Thou  in  Me, 
that  they  all  may  be  one  in  us."  Oh,  when  I  think  of 
what  the  church  really  is  meaning  all  this  time,  —  the 
fellowship  of  faith  and  goodness  everywhere,  —  it  does 
make  me  indignant  to  hear  how  some  men  talk  of  it  in 
little  narrow  mechanical  phrases,  and  think  that  they 
alone  do  it  worthy  honor. 

And  now  do  you  ask  me  how  can  one  enter  into 
this  society ?  "I  would  not  stand  outside  of  all  this  or- 
ganism of  holiness  and  truth.  I  would  be  in,  as  well  as 
believe  in,  the  '  communion  of  saints.'  "  I  have  spoken 
poorly,  indeed,  unless  you  see  the  answer.  The  saint 
is  he  in  whom  God  dwells.  But  God  comes  to  dwell 
in  men,  by  His  Holy  Spirit,  in  the  great  work  of  the 
personal  regeneration.  Do  you  ask  then,  "  How  shall 
I  enter  in  to  the  company  of  saints  ?  "  You  must  yield 
yourself  to  that  power  of  God  which  from  your  birth 
up  until  now  has  been  waiting  at  your  heart-doors,  to 
enter  in  and  fill  your  nature  with  itself.  You  have  kept 
your  heart  full  of  selfishness.  You  must  turn  it  all 
out,  and  take  God  in,  and  straightway,  living  by  Him 
and  for  Him,  you  are  one  with  the  living  saints  and 
dead.  Oh,  wondrous  moment  of  conversion !  Out  to 
the  farthest  limits  of  the  perfect  body  there  runs  the 
tidings  of  a  new  member  added  to  the  unity.  Is  it 
strange  that  "  there  is  joy  in  heaven  ?  "  This  doctrine 
of  the  communion  of  the  saints  alone  lete  us  realize  that 


ALL   SAINTS     .lAY.  185 

text.  The  saints  of  old  know  that  the  body  of  their 
Lord,  the  universal  church,  is  nearer  its  completion. 
The  saints  who  stand  around  feel  their  own  spiritual  life 
move  quicker  at  the  access  of  this  new  vitality.  The 
whole  body  knows  of  it  and  rejoices  with  intenser  life. 
The  man  himself,  knowing  Christ  for  his,  knows  all 
Christ's  brethren  and  followers  his  fellows  in  the  holy 
anity  of  faith.  Oh,  wondrous  moment  of  regeneration ! 
Our  church  rites,  our  baptisms  and  confirmations,  what 
we  call  "joining  the  church,"  feebly  tries  to  typify  the 
great  event.  If  the  rites  seem  to  you  cold  and  hollow, 
and  do  not  attract  you,  is  there  nothing  in  this  great 
spiritual  event  to  stir  your  heart,  and  make  you  say,  "  I, 
too,  will  be  a  Christian." 

And  now  ought  there  not  to  be  a  power  to  hold  men 
back  from  sin  in  this  great  truth  of  all  saints  ?  The 
world  seems  very  wrong  and  wicked.  Vice  has  the  up- 
per hand.  All  is  apparently  drifting  on  from  worse  to 
worse.  Sin  has  it  all  its  own  way.  So  it  seems  some- 
times, and  the  young  man  says,  "'  What  is  the  use  of 
fighting  against  the  current  ?  I  never  can  do  better. 
What  is  the  use  of  trying  ?  I  must  yield  at  last."  And 
just  then,  what  if  the  clouds  can  open  round  him  for  one 
moment  and  let  him  see  how  in  the  old  times,  and  to-day, 
there  always  has  been,  and  still  is,  through  all  the  wick- 
edness, a  compact  and  steady  struggle  of  goodness  in  the 
world.  Let  him  see  the  church  as  representing  thus  tho 
sum  of  the  presence  of  God  in  human  action,  struggling 
and  living  always,  riding  the  storms,  keeping  alive  the 
name  of  Christ,  and  the  possibility  of  holiness  among  men. 
Let  him  hear  this  sainthood  of  the  ages  calling  to  him, 
"  Come,  come  to  us,  come  with  us  to  God."    And  is  there 


186  ALL  saints'  day. 

not  something  in  him  to  which  that  call  will  appeal  to 
spur  him  to  one  more  attempt  to  make  his  escape,  to 
burst  his  chains,  to  be  a  good  man,  and  be  saved.  And 
having  once  heard  that  cry,  can  he  go  on  and  sin,  with- 
out feeling,  always,  that  he  is  doubly  obstinate ;  that  he 
is  setting  himself  not  merely  against  God,  but  against  his 
fellows  too  ;  that  they  are  looking  on  with  sorrow  and  with 
pity,  as  he  goes  to  his  self-chosen  ruin  ?  This  is  no  il- 
legitimate appeal.  It  does  not  dishonor  the  influence  of 
God,  the  heavenly  Father,  when  you  plead  also  with  a 
wicked  boy,  by  all  the  love  and  high  example  of  his  holj 
earthly  father  or  mother,  to  turn  to  nobler  things.  All  is 
God's  influence,  however  it  is  brought  to  bear.  And  this 
you  must  know,  —  I  tell  it  to  you  solemnly,  —  you  cannot 
sin  as  if  you  were  the  first  and  only  man  that  God  ever 
made  and  put  into  the  world.  If  you  will  sin,  you  sin 
against  every  high  precedent  of  goodness ;  you  tread  on 
those  examples  of  holiness  that  have  made  the  world 
lustrous  and  sacred ;  you  sweep  away  the  inspiration  of 
sainthood  that  comes  down  out  of  the  past,  and  gathers 
up  around  you  from  the  present,  like  the  veiy  breath  of 
heaven  ;  you  turn  away  and  go  out,  obstinately  and  de- 
liberately, not  merely  from  the  kingdom  of  God,  but 
from  the  communion  of  saints.  May  God  help  you,  and 
bring  you  back. 

And  now  my  work  to-night  is  done  if  I  can  bid  any  of 
you  away  with  this  great  presence  of  the  saints  of  God 
surrounding  you.  Sin  is  disintegrating.  It  breaks  up 
and  scatters  fellowships.  It  makes  souls  live  and  die  in 
solitude.  I  appeal  to  you  by  all  the  holy  society  of 
Christianity.  There  is  holiness  all  around  you  to  help 
you  and  inspire  you.     You  will  have  to  suffer  in  doing 


ALL   SAINTS'   DAY.  137 

right.  Here  axe  all  the  martyrs  to  hi  your  company. 
Yon  must  find  Christ  and  be  forgiven  by  Him.  Here  is 
the  multitude  who  have  found  Him,  each  with  some  story 
of  mercy  of  his  own  to  tell  you,  till  your  hopelessness  of 
iuccess  shall  turn  into  hope  as  you  listen  to  them  in 
spite  of  yourself.  You  will  need  patience.  Behold  aU 
the  waiters  for  God,  each  at  his  watching  place  in  all  the 
ages.  You  have  bad  habits  to  conquer.  Here  is  the  old 
battle-field,  and  the  shouts  with  which  other  men  who 
have  fought  down  themselves  by  God's  help  are  hailing 
their  victory  in  Him,  shall  be  the  prophecy  of  your  tri- 
umph as  you  go  into  the  fight.  You  must  not  stand 
alone.  All  this  strength  is  for  you.  Come  in  among  these 
best  souls  that  Iselieve  in  and  are  finding  God.  I  lift  the 
words  above  all  low  formality  that  clings  to  them,  and 
say,  Come,  join  the  Church.  Not  in  mere  outward  act, 
but  in  true  inward  fellowship.  Stand  boldly  with  those 
who  are  trying  to  work  for  God,  and  willing  to  suffer  for 
God  here  ;  and  then  in  the  perfect  communion  of  saints, 
you  shall  stand  at  last  among  that  great  multitude  which 
no  man  can  number,  who  out  of  all  nations  and  kindreds 
and  people  and  tongues  shall  stand  before  the  throne  and 
before  the  Lamb,  clad  with  white  robes,  and  with  palraa 
in  their  hands,  crying  with  a  loud  voice,  "  Salvation  to 
our  God,  who  sitteth  upon  the  throne,  and  to  the  Lamb.*' 
May  Grod  gi-ant  it  for  us  all. 


Vlll. 

THE  MAN  WITH   ONE  TALENT. 
"  Tben  he  which  had    received  the  one  talent  came."  —  Matt.  xxt.  S4 

We  must  all  have  reproached  ourselves  sometimes  for 
the  difficulty  which  we  found  in  liking  the  best  people 
best.  We  wondered  why  it  was.  A  man  who  was  esti- 
mable in  every  way,  prudent,  just,  honest,  doing  all  his 
duties  faithfully  and  well,  did  not  interest  us.  If  he  pros- 
pered we  were  not  specially  glad.  If  he  met  with  dis- 
aster we  could  not  say  that  we  were  sorry.  While  some 
mere  vagabond  of  fortune,  who,  doing  nothing  to  deserve 
prosperity,  was  always  in  ill-luck,  has  drawn  out  our 
kindest  feeling.  I  think  that  there  is  something  of  this 
kind  in  our  feeling  about  the  people  in  this  parable  of 
our  Lord's.  The  man  with  the  five  talents  and  the  man 
witli  the  two  talents  come  up  with  their  orderly  reports. 
They  have  been  faithful  and  industrious.  We  know  that 
they  have  deserved  the  "well-done"  that  greets  them, 
and  we  look  on  with  calm  approval  as  they  pass  off  to 
enter  into  the  joy  of  their  Lord.  And  then  the  poor  fel- 
low who  had  received  the  one  talent  comes.  He  brings 
his  napkin,  a  poor  show  of  carefulness  that  covers  up  hia 
carelessness,  and  holds  it  out  with  his  talent  in  it.  We 
hear  his  slipshod  and  cowardly  attempt  at  an  excuse.  He 
stands  forlorn  and  helpless  as  the  rebuke  falls  on  him, 


THE   MAN   WITH  ONE  TALENT.  189 

and  a  sort  of  pity  that  is  close  to  love  springs  up  in  our 
hearts,  and  makes  us  mourn  for  him  as  he  is  dragged  off 
to  the  outer  darkness. 

And  a  large  part  of  what  inclines  us  to  like  him  and 
•uch  as  him  is  the  show  of  modesty  which  appears  in 
what  they  have  to  say  about  themselves.  We  shall  see 
by  and  by  what  their  modesty  is  really  worth ;  but  their 
first  defence  of  their  inefficiency  sounds  modest.  "  I  had 
but  one  talent,"  the  poor  man  exclaims,  "  what  could  I 
do  ?  What  place  for  me  among  the  workers  and  ex 
changers  ?  How  could  I  dare  to  front  the  world  and  its 
responsibilities  and  dangers  ?  I  could  have  done  so  little 
even  if  I  had  succeeded.  What  does  it  matter  whether 
such  a  little  brain  and  such  weak  hands  as  mine  worked 
or  were  idle,  and  so  I  took  the  safest  and  the  easiest  way. 
Lo,  here  is  thy  talent  done  up  in  a  napkin.''  How  mod- 
est, even  if  weak,  it  sounds  beside  the  manly  confidence 
which  seems  touched  with  pride  as  it  reports  :  "  Lord, 
thou  deliveredst  unto  me  five  talents  ;  behold  I  have 
gained  beside  them  five  talents  more.'* 

Let  us  speak  to-day  about  the  one  talented  men,  —  the 
men  who  are  crushed  and  enfeebled  by  a  sense  of  their 
own  insignificance.  By  and  by  they  become  cowardly 
and  hide  themselves  behind  their  own  good-for-nothing- 
ness,  away  from  care,  away  from  effort ;  but  at  first  it  is 
a  mere  weakening  of  the  joints  and  stifling  of  the  cour- 
age by  a  feeling  of  bow  little  there  is  to  them,  and  so  that 
whether  tliey  do  ill  or  well  it  is  not  of  much  consequence  i 
that  any  attainment  really  worth  attaining  is  totally  out 
of  their  reach.  What  multitudes  of  such  men  we  see. 
A  young  man  starts  with  aspirations  after  culture.  He 
will  make  something  out  of  this  brain  of  his.     Very  soon 


140  THE  MAN  WITH  ONE  TALENT. 

he  comes  in  contact  with  the  great,  the  wise,  the  witty 
of  his  own  time  and  of  the  past,  and  then  he  discovers 
how  little  brain  he  really  has  to  cultivate,  and  he  givea 
up  in  despair.  Let  him  be  a  drudge  and  make  his  money, 
or  manage  his  house,  or  drive  his  horses.  That  is  all  that 
he  is  good  for.  A  young  man  begins  to  be  a  Christian. 
Great  wide  visions  of  free  and  exalted  thought  open  be- 
fore him.  He  will  not  be  a  mere  traditional  believer.  He 
will  seek  devoutly  to  understand  his  faith,  and  to  send  his 
spiritual  reason  as  near  as  he  may  to  the  heart  of  the  great 
problems  of  God's  providence  and  man's  life.  How  soon 
he  finds  his  thought  baffled  and  gives  up,  and,  saying 
to  himseK,  "  Poor  fool,  what  right  have  such  as  you  to 
think  about  the  high  things  of  religion  ?  "  he  subsides  into 
another  of  the  unthinking  routine  believers  who  fill  our 
churches.  A  man  is  deeply  conscious  of  the  misery  that 
is  in  the  world.  He  tries  to  help  it,  but  when  he  sees 
how  little  he  can  do,  how  big  the  bulk  of  wretchedness 
is  against  which  his  poor  effort  at  relief  is  flung,  it  seems 
to  him  so  utterly  not  worth  his  while  that  he  lets  it  all 
go,  and  sinks  back  into  the  prudent  merchant  or  the  self- 
indulgent  philosopher,  looking  on  at  woes  that  he  no 
longer  tries  to  help. 

This  is  the  history  of  so  much  of  the  inefficiency  of  so 
many  of  the  inefficient  men  that  we  see  about  us.  These 
men  have  looked  at  life  and  given  up  in  despair.  Once, 
long  ago,  when  they  were  in  college,  when  they  first  went 
into  business,  they  took  their  talent  out  and  gazed  at  it 
and  wondered  how  they  should  invest  it ;  but  it  looked 
80  little  that  they  lost  all  heart,  and  wrapped  it  in  the 
napkin  where  it  has  been  ever  since,  and  that  is  the  whole 
■tory  of  their  useless  lives.     And  yet  one  thing  seems 


THE  MAN  WITH   ONE   TALENT.  141 

clear,  that  only  by  the  waking  up  of  men  like  these, 
only  by  new  courage  put  into  their  hopelessness,  can  the 
world  really  make  trustworthy  growth.  It  seems  very 
certain  that  the  world  is  to  grow  better  and  richer  in  the 
future,  however  it  has  been  in  the  past,  not  by  the  mag- 
nificent  achievements  of  the  highly-gifted  few,  but  by  the 
patient  faithfulness  of  the  one-talented  many.  If  we 
could  draw  back  the  curtains  of  the  millennium  and  look 
in,  we  should  see  not  a  Hercules  here  and  there  standing 
on  the  world-wasting  monsters  he  had  killed  ;  but  a  world 
full  of  men  each  with  an  arm  of  moderate  muscle,  but 
each  triumphant  over  his  own  little  piece  of  the  obstinacy 
of  earth  or  the  ferocity  of  the  brutes.  It  seems  as  if  the 
heroes  had  done  almost  all  for  the  world  that  they  can 
do,  and  not  much  more  can  come  till  common  men  awake 
and  take  their  common  tasks.  I  do  believe  the  common 
man's  task  is  the  hardest.  The  hero  has  the  hero's  as- 
piration that  lifts  him  to  his  labor.  All  gi-eat  duties  are 
easier  than  the  little  ones,  though  they  cost  far  more 
blood  and  agony.  That  is  a  truth  we  all  find  out.  And 
this  is  part  of  the  reason  why  we  make  allowance  for  our 
poor  friend  in  the  parable.  But  if  we  look  at  it  in  a 
higher  way,  surely  we  may  come  to  feel  that  the  very  cer- 
tainty that  the  world  must  be  saved  by  the  faithfulness 
of  commonplace  people  is  what  is  needed  to  rescue  such 
people  from  commonplaceness  in  their  own  eyes,  and 
clothe  their  lives  with  the  dignity  which  they  seem  so 
wofuUy  to  lack,  and  which,  if  any  man  does  not  see  some- 
where shining  through  the  rusty  texture  of  his  life,  he 
cannot  live  it  welL 

But  we  may  go  deeper  than  this  into  the  causes  and 
the  cure  of  that  self-disgust  which  makes  a  man  think  it 


142  THE  MAN  WITH  ONE  TALENT. 

not  worth  while  to  try  to  do  anything  in  the  woild.  The 
real  root  *)f  it  is  in  the  very  presence  of  self -consciousness 
at  all.  Any  man  who  is  good  for  anything,  if  he  is  al- 
ways thinking  about  himself,  will  come  to  think  himsell 
good  for  nothing  very  soon.  It  is  only  a  fop  or  a  fool 
who  can  bear  to  look  at  himself  all  day  long,  without 
disgust.  And  so  the  first  thing  for  a  man  to  do,  who 
wants  to  use  his  best  powers  at  their  best,  is  to  get  rid  of 
self-consciousness,  to  stop  thinking  about  himself  and  how 
he  is  working,  altogether.  Ah,  that  is  so  easy  to  say  and 
so  hard  to  do  !  Of  course  it  is  ;  but  there  are  two  pow- 
ers which  God  put  into  the  human  breast  at  the  begin- 
ning, whose  very  purpose  is  to  help  men  do  just  this. 
These  are  the  power  of  loving  and  working  for  an  abso- 
lute duty,  and  the  power  of  loving  and  working  for  our 
fellow-men.  In  those  two  powers  lies  man's  hope  to  be 
rescued  from  self-consciousness,  w  *th  all  its  curses.  These 
are  the  champions  that  take  a  man's  heavy  self  off  from 
him  when  it  is  getting  him  down.  A  man  is  testing  his 
powers,  wondering  whether  he  can  do  tliis,  wondering 
whether  he  can  do  that,  almost  despairing  when  he  sees 
how  little  he  can  do.  He  is  lost  if  he  goes  on  in  that 
way ;  but  then  he  suddenly  discovers  that  a  thing  is 
right  and  must  be  done,  or  the  cry  of  a  world,  or  of  a 
fellow-man,  that  must  have  help,  rises  up  and  appals 
him,  and  the  man  no  longer  thinks  whether  he  is  strong 
enough,  anj  more  than  the  mother  lion  thinks  whether  it 
is  worth  while  for  her  to  try,  when  she  springs  to  lielp 
her  cub  who  must  be  rescued.  When  a  man  becomes 
aware  of  these  great  necessities,  he  is  rescued  from  the 
consideration  of  himself  altogether.  The  despotism  of 
such  a  necessity  sets  him  free,  and  he  just  goes  and  does 


THE  MAN  WITH   ONE  TALENT.  143 

what  must  be  done  with  all  his  might.  This  is  the  history 
of  every  brave  effective  man  that  ever  lived.  Moses,  Lu- 
ther, Cromwell,  every  one  of  them  dallied  with  the  cor- 
ners of  the  napkin,  and  almost  folded  up  the  talent ;  but 
the  call  was  too  strong,  and  each  forgot  his  weakness  and 
went  and  worked  his  fragment  of  the  world's  salvation. 

I  know  the  answer  that  suggests  itself  at  once.  "  These 
motives  are  strong  enough,"  you  say,  "  when  they  are  felt. 
Let  them  take  hold  of  a  man,  and  they  will  save  him. 
But  the  trouble  is  that  they  cannot  save  common  men, 
because  common  men  will  not  feel  them.  They  are  too 
abstract  and  too  high."  And  there  is  truth  in  that.  And 
to  relieve  that  difficulty  something  else  comes  in.  These 
abstract  and  far-off  necessities  are  taken  up  and  embod- 
ied in  a  new  necessity  which  every  man  can  feel.  That 
new  necessity  is  a  personal  God.  Appealing  to  the  sim- 
plest feelings,  full  of  His  love,  mighty  with  all  the  obliga- 
tion of  His  fatherhood  and  mercy,  God  takes  the  abstract 
right  and  the  duties  of  a  half -felt  human  brotherhood,  and 
blends  them  both  into  obedience  to  Him.  The  absolute 
necessity  that  we  should  do  His  will  becomes  the  despot 
of  the  life.  He  may  be  real  to  the  most  feebly  perceptive 
of  His  children.  His  is  a  voice  which,  stem  with  majesty, 
may  find  its  way  into  the  dullest  ears.  And  when  He 
finds  a  sluggish  soul  and  claims  it.  He  is  that  soul's  res- 
cue from  self-consciousness,  and  self-measurement,  and 
self-disgust.  He  sets  a  man  free  from  himself.  "  T  will 
walk  at  liberty,  for  I  keep  thy  commandments."  That 
Ls  at  least  one  meaning  of  that  profound  cry  of  David's, 
This  is  the  truth  of  all  this  parable.  "  Thou  knewest 
me,  thy  master,  therefore  thou  shouldst  have  worked !  " 
How  often  it  has  come  I     How  many  men  have  forgotten 


144  THE   MAN  WITH   ONE   TALENT. 

themselves  when  they  saw  God  !  Oh,  wonderful  release ! 
You  who  are  wishing  you  could  do  a  thing  you  ought  to 
do,  and  hiding  behind  your  weakness ;  you  must  heai 
God  saying,  "  Do  it !  "  and  feel  the  necessity  of  obeying 
Him,  the  joy  of  pleasing  Him  run  through  your  being 
like  the  strong  blood  of  a  new  life  ;  and  then,  then  only, 
you  are  on  your  feet,  and  the  impossible  thing  is  done. 
You  will  not  stop  then  to  ask  whether  you  can  do  it  til] 
you  feel  upon  your  head  the  crown  of  victory.  And  then 
you  will  take  that  crown  off  and  cast  it  at  His  feet,  foi 
you  will  know  that  really  He  did  it  and  not  you. 

Does  not  this  turn  the  tables  entirely  ?  If  this  sort  of 
ineflBciency  has  its  root  in  self-consciousness,  if  it  can  be 
released  only  by  forgetfulness  of  self,  what  has  become 
of  the  modesty  which  we  thought  we  saw  in  the  man's 
face,  who  came  up  with  his  feeble  excuse  for  his  unprof- 
itable talent  ?  It  is  only  a  thin-veiled  pride,  not  modesty 
at  all.  And  he  who  comes  with  all  his  faithful  work, 
and  offers  it  to  the  Lord  by  whom  alone  he  did  it  —  his 
is  the  true  humility.  I  beg  you  to  tbink  of  this  and  feel 
it.  If  you  are  hiding  yourself  behind  your  commonness 
and  littleness,  come  out !  That  shelter  is  a  citadel  of 
pride.  Come  out,  and  take  the  work  that  God  has  given 
you.  Do  it  for  Him  and  by  Him.  Cease  to  parade  your 
feebleness.  Work  in  His  light,  and  so  escape  the  outer 
darkness. 

And  now  that  I  have  said  thus  much  in  general,  there 
is  one  special  application  of  our  subject  which  interests 
me  very  deeply,  and  I  should  like  to  narrow  our  view  to 
that,  and  deal  with  it  a  little  more  particularly.  Of  all 
the  powers  of  which  men  easily  think  that  they  are 
wholly  or  almost  destitute,  and  so  from  whose  exercise 


THE  MAN  WITH  ONE  TALENT.  146 

they  think  themselves  excused,  the  one  most  commonly 
alleged,  I  think,  is  the  religious  power,  the  whole  spirit- 
ual faculty  in  general.  How  familiar  it  all  sounds  from 
constant  repetition.  A  man  says,  "  I  know  that  people 
are  religious.  It  is  no  fancy  ;  it  is  a  reality  with  them. 
I  know  their  souls  do  apprehend  a  supernatural.  They 
live  in  the  presence  of  spiritual  forces  which  they  never 
see.  Eternity  is  as  real  to  them  as  time.  They  love 
God ;  they  serve  Christ ;  and  the  Holy  Spirit,  the  Lord 
and  Giver  of  Life,  is  with  them  and  in  them  constantly 
But  for  me,  simply,  all  this  is  impossible.  I  have  no 
spiritual  capacity.  It  is  like  asking  me  to  use  a  sense  i 
nave  not  got ;  like  asking  a  blind  man  to  see,  when  you 
ask  me  to  be  religious.  I  can  take  only  what  the  sense* 
set  before  me.  I  can  believe  intensely  only  what  I  see.' 
And  so,  not  scoffingly,  but  sadly,  he  counts  himself  to- 
tally outside  the  possibility  of  all  the  joy  and  all  the 
culture  which  he  knows  comes  to  his  brethren  out  of 
the  spiritual  life,  the  life  of  faith. 

When  I  see  such  a  man,  all  thought  of  indignation  in 
my  mind  passes  off  entirely,  and  a  profound  pity,  a  com- 
plete sense  of  what  he  might  be,  and  of  what  he  is 
losing,  takes  possession  of  me.  It  is  too  serious  a  matter 
for  mere  indignation.  I  may  be  angry  with  a  man  who 
might  carve  statues  and  paint  pictures,  if  he  spent  his 
life  in  making  mock  flowers  out  of  wax  and  paper ;  but 
when  a  man  who  might  have  God  for  company  shuts  up 
and  disowns  those  doors  of  his  nature  through  which  God 
can  enter,  and  lives  the  emptied  life  which  every  man 
lives  who  lives  without  God,  his  loss  is  too  dreadful  to  be 
angry  with.  You  merely  mourn  for  him,  and  long  and 
try  to  help  him  if  you  can. 

10 


146  THE  MAN  WITH  ONE   TALENT. 

And  what  shall  we  say  of  this  phenomenon?  Th« 
first  thing  that  we  must  say  will  be  this:  That  religion 
to  that  man  has,  in  all  probabihty,  been  wrongly  put 
Some  temporary,  accidental,  special  form  of  spiritual  life 
has  been  set  up  before  him,  either  by  himself  or  by  some 
one  to  whom  he  has  listened,  as  if  it  were  eternal  and  es- 
sential. He  has  looked  at  that,  and  said,  truly,  that  there 
was  nothing  in  him  that  could  live  such  a  life  as  that. 
And  so  because  men  said,  narrowly,  that  to  be  that  was 
to  be  religious,  he  has  said  that  there  was  no  possibility 
of  religion  for  him,  while  all  the  time  there  slept  in  his 
nature  a  rich  capacity  for  some  new  characteristic  type  of 
spiritual  force,  which,  once  set  free,  should  flower  into 
luxuriant  beauty,  and  glorify  the  world.  The  man  has 
not  got  hold  of  the  heart  of  religion  at  all,  only  of  some- 
body's special  embodiment  of  it,  and  sunk  back,  heart- 
less, because  he  could  not  copy  that.  In  the  old  days, 
when  the  accepted  type  of  saintship  was  found  in  con  - 
templative  mortals  who  grew  haggard  on  the  tops  or 
lofty  columns,  or  starved  in  the  caves  of  desolate  mount- 
ains, a  brave,  full-blooded  man,  eager  for  work,  and  lit- 
tle capable  of  speculation,  might  well  conclude  that  he 
could  never  be  a  saint.  Two  centuries  ago  a  man  full  of 
the  precious  love  of  Christ,  who  was  told,  according  to 
the  intense  error  of  the  time,  that  he  could  not  love 
Christ  truly  unless  he  was  willing  to  give  up  his  hope  of 
happiness  in  Him  forever,  might  well  have  settled  down 
on  the  conviction  that  for  him  the  love  of  Jesus,  whom  he 
longed  to  love,  was  impossible.  Nowadays,  if  to  worship 
is  made  to  mean  to  worship  in  a  certain  way,  either  with 
an  invariable  richness,  or  an  invariable  simplicity  of  Ht- 
urgy,  there  will  always  be  multitudes  who  reluctantlj 


THE  MAN  WITH   ONE   TALENT.  147 

feci  that  they  were  not  made  to  worship  at  all.  Aftei 
all,  the  fatal  fault,  the  fault  that  makes  one  glow  most 
earnestly  into  hatred  of  the  narrowness  of  sectarianism, 
the  making  that  essential  which  is  only  accidental^  the 
confining  of  Christianity  to  this  or  that  form  of  Christian 
life,  is  that  it  throws  off  thousands  of  earnest  men  and 
women  who  cannot  be  Christians  after  that  accepted  type, 
and  makes  them  straightway  conclude  that  for  thtnn  there 
is  no  Christianity  at  all.  Worse  even  than  the  stifling  of 
the  souls  within  it,  by  a  narrow  church,  is  the  starving  of 
the  souls  without  it  who  have  a  right  to  all  the  richness 
of  religion  which  religious  narrowness  involves. 

But  if  he  feels  this,  then  the  earnest  man  who  believes" 
that  all  men  have  in  them  the  capacity  for  Christianity 
which  many  of  them  are  leaving  unused  because  of  their 
incapacity  for  certain  of  its  special  forms,  sets  himself 
seriously  to  asking  what  is  there  that  is  universal  and  es- 
sential, and  so  really  in  all  men's  power.  All  men  will 
not  be  Calvinists,  or  Quakers,  or  Methodists,  or  Episco- 
palians. But  underneath  and  through  them  all  there  is 
something  which  every  man  may  reach  and  fasten  him- 
self to,  and  be  a  Christian  under  some  form  or  other. 
What  is  that  something  ?  What  will  the  soul  be  that 
finds  it  ?  To  ask  that  question  is  to  go  back  through  the 
dark  tortuous  ravines  of  church  history,  up  onto  that 
broad,  open  table-land  of  the  New  Testament,  from 
which  all  the  ravines  come  down.  There  it  becomes  all 
plain.  The  man  who  is  a  Christian  there,  with  Peter, 
with  John,  nay  with  Jesus,  will  be  a  man,  spiritual,  rev- 
erent, and  penitent.  That  is  the  heart  of  the  matter; 
he  will  be  conscious  of  his  own  soul  and  its  capacities ; 
conscious  of  God,  and  full  of  humble  love  to  Him ;  coo- 


148  THE   MAN   WITH   ONE   TALENT. 

Bcioiis  of  bis  sin  and  humbly  dependent  upon  Christ  for 
forgiveness  and  for  help.  Some  things  he  will  know  are 
not  universal ;  he  will  feel  his  soul  bearing  witness  of 
itself  on  whatever  may  be  its  most  sensitive  and  needy 
side ;  he  will  cling  to  what  attribute  or  attitude  of  God 
most  nearly  and  powerfully  touches  him ;  he  will  seem 
to  see  this  or  that  method,  or  sort  of  efficacy  in  the  work 
and  life  of  Christ.  On  all  these  things  he  will  be  him- 
self ;  none  of  these  things  will  be  the  substance  of  his 
religion.  But  the  great  facts  that  he  was  not  born  to 
die,  that  there  is  a  God  who  loves  him  and  whom  he 
may  love,  that  that  God  has  manifested  Himself  in  the 
Christ,  who  will  forgive  him,  and  help  him,  and  save 
him,  if  he  trusts  in  Him,  this  is  his  religion  ;  and  when 
this  comes  to  his  soul,  and  the  nature  which  has  been  try 
ing  to  comprehend  puzzling  doctrines  and  shape  itself 
into  the  figure  of  hard  forms,  just  finds  the  simplicity  of 
the  whole  thing,  and  rests  with  utter  satisfaction  on  the 
profoundness  of  the  divine  life,  and  the  richness  of  the 
divine  love ;  then  who  shall  tell  with  what  surprised  de- 
light the  impossible  opens  into  the  possible,  and  the 
spii'ituality  which  has  been  trying  to  warm  itself  at  the 
moonlight,  and  has  concluded  that  it  has  no  capacity  for 
warmth,  sees  the  great  sun  arise  and  fills  itself  with  great 
heartfuls  of  his  heat  ? 

Is  this  true  ?  Am  I  right  in  thinking  that  the  reason 
why  many  people  are  not  Christians  is  that  they  misrep- 
resent Christianity  to  themselves,  that  they  have  not 
conceived  its  simplicity  ?  Am  I  right  when  I  believe 
that  there  is  in  every  man  the  power  to  take  it  in  this 
simplicity  and  make  it  his  new  life  ?i  I  do  believe  so 
faUy,  and  for  various  reasons.     The  first  reason  of  all  u 


THE  ilAN   WITH   ONE   TALENT.  149 

one  that  is  no  reason  except  to  him  who  is  already  a  be 
liever,  but  surely  to  him  it  must  come  very  strongly, 
It  does  seem  to  me  that  no  man  can  really  seem  to  him- 
self to  be  living  a  spiritual  life,  and  not  hold  with  all  hia 
heart  as  a  possibility,  and  long  to  see  realized  as  a  fact, 
the  spiritual  life  in  every  soul  of  every  son  of  man.  '  If 
I  truly  thought  that  there  was  any  one  man  who  really 
was,  as  so  many  men  have  told  me  that  they  v^^ere,  inca- 
pable of  spirituality,  bound  down  inevitably  to  carnal- 
ity and  the  drudgery  of  material  life,  I  should  lose  my 
whole  faith  in  the  capacity  of  spirituality  in  any  man. 
The  whole  would  melt  and  flutter  off  into  a  thin  dreamy 
delusion.  I  think  that  that  same  character  of  God  which 
makes  it  possible  for  Him  to  give  the  spiritual  life  to  any 
of  His  children,  makes  it  necessary  that  He  should  give 
the  free  opportunity  of  the  same  spiritual  life  to  all  His 
children.  I  am  sure  that  there  are  men  enough  in 
Africa,  in  Asia,  out  in  the  wigwams,  nay,  right  here  by 
my  side,  to  whom  many  of  the  statements  of  truth  which 
are  dear  to  me  are  and  always  wdll  be  unintelligible  • 
many  of  the  forms  of  worship  which  are  rich  to  me  are 
and  always  will  be  barren.  To  know  that  does  not 
trouble  me ;  but  to  know  that  there  was  anywhere  on 
God's  earth  a  human  being  who  was,  and  necessarily 
always  must  be,  incapable  of  the  sense  of  soul,  the  love 
for  God,  the  repentance  of  sin,  the  reliance  of  salvation, 
I  could  not  know  that  and  yet  believe  in  God. 

2.  And  then  another  reason  why  we  have  a  right  to 
believe  that  there  is  in  every  man  a  capacity  for  this  fun- 
damental and  essential  Christianity  Ues  in  the  fact  that 
the  activities  of  such  a  Christianity  really  demand  only 
those  powers  which  in  ordinary  human  life  we  &11  hold 


160  THE  MAN  WITH  ONE  TALENT. 

to  be  absolutely  universal.  In  higher  degrees,  straining 
them  to  loftier  reaches,  refining  them,  exalting  them  un 
epeakably,  yet  still  keeping  their  essence  unimpaired,  re- 
ligion takes  the  powers  that  belong  to  all  men,  and  makes 
them  the  instruments  of  her  sublimest  tasks.  When  we 
shall  find  a  man  who  is  entirely  incapable  of  realizing 
what  he  has  never  seen,  entirely  unable  to  answer  love 
■with  a  responsive  gratitude,  entirely  unsensitive  to  the 
sorrowfulness  of  doing  wrong;  a  man,  I  say,  not  who  has 
not  all  these  powers  at  their  best,  but  a  man  who  has  no 
spark  of  them  to  fan  to  life,  no  seed  of  them  to  foster  and 
to  ripen  ;  then  we  have  found  a  man  of  whom  it  will  be 
as  impossible  to  make  a  Christian  as  it  would  be  to  make 
a  Christian  of  a  mountain  or  a  tree.  But  these  simple 
first  powers  are  just  what  in  their  universality  character- 
ize our  humanity.  It  is  largely  by  their  possession  that 
we  know  a  man  from  a  piece  of  wood  or  stone  carved  in 
the  human  likeness.  These  powers  are  in  all  humanity, 
and  according  to  the  richness  with  which  they  inhabit  and 
inspire  it,  humanity  becomes  more  truly  human.  These 
are  the  powers  that  play  through  life  and  make  its 
poetry,  that  breathe  through  history  and  make  the  music 
to  which  the  centuries  move  and  by  which  they  know 
each  other's  deeper  life.  They  are  the  soul  of  human 
character,  the  bond  of  human  brotherhood.  They  make 
the  beauty  of  the  family,  the  majesty  of  the  state.  They 
culminate  in  Christianity  and  make  it  seem  to  be  indeed 
the  great  faith  of  humanity,  —  the  land  of  spiritual  truth 
in  which  each  man  by  his  pure  humanity  has  a  true  place. 
8.  If  thus  the  spiritual  life  is  something  not  strange 
in  its  essence,  but  familiar ;  if  its  working  force  consists 
of  the  simplest  and  most  fundamental  of  the  powers  ol 


THE   MAN  WITH   ONE  TALENT.  151 

hnmanity  brought  into  contact  with  and  filled  full  of  a 
divine  intluence,  then  another  thing  which  we  see  con- 
tinually is  not  strange.  And  this  other  thing  constitutes 
another  reason  for  believing  that  in  every  man  the  c&pao- 
ity  of  the  spiritual  life  abides,  hidden  if  it  is  not  seen, 
sleeping  if  it  is  not  awake.  There  are  certain  experi- 
ences in  every  life  which  have  their  power  just  in  this, 
that  they  break  through  the  elaborate  surface,  and  get 
down  to  the  simplest  thoughts  and  emotions  of  the  hu- 
man heart.  Great  sickness,  sudden  bereavement,  great 
joy,  intense  love  or  enthusiasm,  fatherhood,  the  near  sight 
of  death,  —  all  of  these  supreme  experiences  of  life  are 
characterized  by  the  breadth,  the  largeness  of  the  sim- 
ple thoughts  and  feelings  they  awaken.  In  them  you 
have  the  crust  broken  to  fragments,  and  the  great  heart 
of  the  life  laid  open.  And  if  that  heart,  laid  open,  is 
inevitably,  universally  spiritual ;  if,  as  we  always  see  in 
thcoc  supreme  moments  of  the  life,  a  soul  most  vividly 
asserts  itself,  and  the  man  insists  upon  another  world  and 
on  a  God,  and  takes  the  story  of  the  Christhood  into  his 
heart  with  hungry  eagerness,  what  does  it  prove  but  this, 
that  when  the  simplest  base  of  any  man's  life  is  reached, 
when  the  ground  above  it  is  torn  off  by  an  earthquake, 
or  melted  bare  by  the  sunshine  of  happiness,  there  is  the 
capacity  for  spirituality,  the  soil  in  which  the  spiritual 
seed  must  grow.  When  I  see  what  we  see  so  often,  the 
man  in  great  trouble  or  great  joy  grown  suddenly  relig- 
ious, the  glad  "  Thank  God !  "  or  the  agonized  "  God  help 
me  !  "  bursting  out  of  unaccustomed  lips,  I  think  it  does 
not  mean  desperation,  and  it  does  not  mean  hypocrisy 
It  means  that  for  once  in  that  man's  life  the  true  soil  ol 
his  nature  has  been  laid  bare,  and  it  has  claimed  the  di» 


152  THE  MAN  WITH  ONE  TALENT. 

vine  relations  for  which  it  was  made ;  just  as  you  strip 
the  layer  of  rock  off  from  a  bed  of  earth  that  lay  below 
it,  and  in  a  day  the  newly  exposed  earth  is  sprouting  all 
over  with  grass  that  you  never  planted.  It  has  caught 
the  grass  seeds  out  of  the  air.  The  wandering  birds  have 
brought  them  to  it.  It  has  found  them  treasured  in  it- 
self. It  puts  forth  upon  them  its  own  simple  nature,  and 
grows  green  from  side  to  side.  The  man's  hard  surface 
may  close  over  when  the  great  agony  or  the  great  joy  is 
past,  and  all  may  seem  just  as  before,  but  he  who  once 
has  known  the  movements  of  this  new  capacity  never 
can  think  of  himself  as  he  was  used  to  think.  He  must 
remember.  He  may  go  on  living  a  most  earthly  life,  but 
he  knows  forever  that  there  is  a  spiritual  heaven  and  a 
spiritual  hell.  He  never  can  say  of  himself  again,  "  I 
have  no  spiritual  capacity."  He  has  discovered  what  he 
often  has  denied.  New  regions  of  joy  and  sorrow,  both 
infinite,  have  opened  to  his  sight  around,  beyond  the 
poor  vexations  and  amazements  of  his  daily  life.  He 
has  looked  upon  God,  and  his  soul  never  can  forget  how 
it  answered  «vhen  it  met  the  gaze  of  the  love  and  power 
which  made  it,  and  for  which  it  was  made. 

4.  But  all  these  indications  of  the  universal  spiritual 

capacity  in  man  seem  to  me,  after  all,  only  to  be  leading 

up  to  one  consummate  exhibition.   I  wish  that  I  could  set 

ihat  consummate  exhibition  worthily  before  you.     To  the 

.^liever  in  the  New  Testament  the  Incarnation  of  Christ 

nust  stand  as  the  supreme  event  of  history.     Whatever 

t  meant  must  be  the  deepest  truth  that  man  can  know. 

And,  amid  all  the  various  speculations  and  opinions  about 

Christ's  person,  all  believers  in  Him  agree  in  this :  that 

He  most  perfectly  represented  the  typt  of  human  life 


THE  MAN   WITH   ONE   TALENT.  153 

not  a  humanity  exceptional  in  its  qualities,  bnt  the  true 
human,  drawn  in  lines  of  exceptional  light  and  fire,  but 
recognizable  still  by  every  man  who  deeply  studied  his 
own  nature.  Here  is  the  first  unshaken  power  of  that 
wonderful  life.  The  Jew  and  the  Saxon  have  found  the 
man  of  Nazareth  their  brother.  The  man  of  the  first 
century  and  the  man  of  the  nineteenth  have  found  in 
Him  the  interpretation  of  themselves.  The  hero  on  the 
battle-field,  the  martyr  at  the  stake,  the  school-boy  at  his 
desk,  the  mother  in  her  anxieties,  all  pour  out  to  Him 
their  fears,  and  draw  out  from  Him  their  courage.  What 
is  most  wonderful,  even  in  a  struggle  with  sin,  the  sinless 
man  does  not  fail  his  human  brethren  ;  and  the  paths  up 
the  mountain  of  the  temptation,  and  into  the  garden  of 
Gethsemane,  are  worn  with  the  feet  of  men  and  women 
going  to  gather  from  His  struggles  the  power  of  victory 
over  the  terrors  and  weaknesses  that  are  besetting  them. 
And  now  it  must  be  forever  a  fact  of  unspeakable  impor- 
tance that  when  the  typal  man  appeared,  he  was  not  only 
one  who  hungered  and  who  thirsted,  who  loved  and  hated, 
who  dreaded  and  hoped,  who  suffered  and  enjoyed,  but 
he  was  one  whose  nature  leaped  beyond  the  mere  mate- 
rial and  grasped  the  spiritual.  He  was  one  who  loved 
God.  He  was  one  who  felt  sin  and  shuddered  at  its  touch. 
If  in  the  Incarnation  I  behold  the  elevation  of  the  lowest 
faculties  of  man,  I  cannot  help  seeing,  too,  the  naturaliza- 
tion, the  familiarizing  of  the  highest.  Just  suppose  that 
we  stood  back  before  the  birth  of  Christ.  We  knew  that 
He  was  coming.  We  knew  that  one  was  to  be  born  who, 
while  He  should  represent  our  humanity  at  its  best,  would 
yet  represent  our  humanity  perfectly.  How  we  should 
have  watched  for  Him.     When  He  comes  we  ehall  know 


164  THE   MAN   WITH   ONE   TALENT. 

what  this  strange  puzzle  of  humanity  means.  When  He 
comes  we  shall  know  what  man  is,  and  so  what  men  shall 
be.  At  last  He  comes!  Here  is  the  unmistakable  hu- 
manity. Here  is  the  baby's  weakness,  the  boy's  growth. 
Here  are  the  appetites,  the  passions,  that  we  know  so 
well.  But  here,  clear  from  the  earliest  consciousness  and 
growing  with  His  growth,  there  is  the  consuming  appe- 
tite of  spirituality.  This  representative  man  is  a  man 
who  sees  all  material  things  only  as  the  means  of  spirit- 
ual culture,  to  whom  immortality  is  a  first  fact  of  human 
existence,  to  whom  God  is  more  real  than  his  brethren, 
to  whom  sin  is  the  one  evil  of  all  the  groaning  and  com- 
plaining world.  And  when,  staggered  by  such  a  preva- 
lence and  strength  of  what  is  rare  and  feeble  in  the 
humanity  we  know,  our  faith  in  His  representativeness 
is  shaken,  and  we  begin  to  say,  "  He  cannot  represent  us 
now.  These  must  be  qualities  in  Him  that  we  can  have 
no  share  in.  He  cannot  expect  us,  certainly  not  all  of  us, 
to  be  like  Him  here."  He  answers,  "  No !  I  will  not  be 
cut  off  from  you,  my  brethren."  He  cries  to  all  men, 
"  Follow  me  I  Take  my  yoke  upon  you,  and  learn  of 
me.  So  only  can  you  find  rest  unto  your  souls.  I  go  to 
my  Father  and  to  your  Father !  Yours  as  well  a»  mine." 
By  every  type  and  symbol,  by  every  degradation  of  the 
outward  life  down  to  the  level  of  His  lowest  children,  by 
the  eager  avoidance  of  everything  which  might  seem  to 
associate  Him  in  limited  sympathy  with  any  part  or  por- 
tion of  mankind,  He  was  forever  claiming  the  whole  hu- 
manity for  His  great  purposes  and  standards.  He  was 
forever  crying,  as  He  cried  there  in  the  temple,  "  If  any 
man  thirst,  let  him  come  unto  me  and  drink." 

That  was  the  Incarnation.     That  was  the  Christ  who 


THE  MAN   WITH   ONE   TALENT.  155 

came  I  To  believe  in  the  Incarnation,  really  to  unaer- 
Btand  that  Christ,  and  yet  to  think  that  we  or  any  other 
men  in  all  the  world  are  essentially  incapable  of  spiritual 
living,  is  an  impossibility.  It  is  through  Him  that  mill- 
ions of  men  have  come,  as  He  said  that  they  should  come, 
to  the  Father.  See  what  that  means.  Millions  of  men 
have  seen  in  Him  first  what  they  were  meant  for,  have 
believed  in  their  own  spiritual  capacity  by  the  convic- 
tion of  His  life,  and  then,  believing  that  they  could,  they 
have  lived  the  life  that  He  lived;  not  stopped  the  storms 
or  raised  the  dead  ;  those  were  but  external  forms  of 
operation  ;  but  entered  into  the  joy  of  the  Lord,  the  re* 
liance  upon  spiritual  truth,  the  certainty  of  spiritual  priv- 
ilege, which  was  His  life. 

In  face  of  all  that  I  behold  in  man,  in  face  especially 
of  all  that  I  behold  in  this  man  who  shows  humanity  to 
itself,  I  do  not  know  how  to  believe  that  there  is  any  man 
living  who  is  incapable  of  spiritual  life ;  any  man  who 
may  not  know  and  value  his  own  soul ;  know  and  love 
God ;  know  and  dread  and  repent  of  sin.  I  may  under- 
Btand  that  this  or  that  expression  of  spirituaUty  in  dogma, 
this  or  that  incorporation  of  spirituality  in  formal  ceremo- 
nies, is  unintelligible,  unattainable  by  you ;  but  that  does 
not  justify  you  in  giving  up  the  thought  of  spirituality 
altogether  and  living  a  canial  life.  Somewhere,  for  your 
Bonl,  there  is  an  entrance  into  that  love  of  God  for  which  / 
all  our  souls  were  made,  and  for  which  the  Sou  of  God 
claimed  them  all.  It  may  be,  nay,  in  the  deepest  sense, 
it  must  be  that  your  way  is  new,  —  a  different  spiritual 
career  leading  into  a  different  spiritual  attainment  from 
any  that  any  man  ever  followed  or  attained  before.  Do 
not  stunt  your  own  growth,  do  not  hamper  the  free  grace 


156  THE   MAN   WITH   ONE   TALENT. 

of  God  by  making  up  your  mind  beforehand  what  kind  of 
a  Christian  you  must  be.  There  is  a  faith  which,  out  of 
all  the  world,  and,  above  all,  out  of  Christ,  gathers  a  per- 
fect conviction  that  the  soul  is  divine,  and  can  come  to 
its  God ;  then  faithfully  takes  the  next  step  towards  Him 
by  the  faithful  doing  of  the  next  known  duty,  the  faith- 
ful acceptance  of  the  next  opened  truth ;  and  so  choosing 
no  way  for  itself,  but  only  sure  that  it  is  God's,  and  that 
God  is  leading  it,  ever  advances  in  His  growing  light  and 
comes  at  last  to  Him.  Such  faith  may  Christ  increase 
in  us. 

Let  us  do  what  we  ought  and  what  we  can  for  our  own 
souls  at  once.  For  the  judgment  is  coming  not  only  at 
the  last  day,  but  all  the  time.  Every  day  the  power  that 
we  will  not  use  is  failing  from  us.  Every  day  the  God 
whose  voice  speaks  through  all  the  inevitable  necessities 
of  our  moral  life  is  saying  of  the  men  who  keep  their  tal- 
ents wrapped  in  napkins,  "  Take  the  talent  from  him;  " 
and  since  he  will  not  enter  into  the  perfect  light  he  must 
be  **"  cast  into  the  outer  darkness.'' 


IX. 

THE  PRESENT  AND  FUTURE  FAITH. 
A   THANKSGiyPiTG  SERMON. 

"  When  the  Son  of  Man  cometh  shall  He  find  faith  on  the  eartk  f  "  — 
Luke  xviii.  8. 

I  WELCOME  you,  this  morning,  to  the  time-honored  ob- 
Bervance  of  Thanksgiving  Day.  Generation  after  genera- 
tion has  taken  up  the  pious  institution  of  our  fathers,  and 
found  in  it  the  fit  expression  of  their  own  experiences  and 
desires.  And  the  first  conviction  with  which  we  certainly 
must  greet  each  new  Thanksgiving  Day  must  be  that  it 
belongs  to  us,  and  that  if  we  are  to  be  really  thankful,  it 
must  be  for  mercies  which  we  ourselves  are  receiving, 
and  with  reference  to  the  circumstances  under  which  we 
live.  No  day  in  all  the  year  so  demands  to  be  surrounded 
with  its  own  local  scenery.  No  service  so  requires  to  be 
timely.  And  therefore  one  is  always  led,  in  thinking 
what  he  shall  say  to  the  people  on  Thanksgiving  Day,  to 
desire  to  speak  peculiarly  of  the  time  in  which  he  and 
the  people  are  living,  and  to  point  out  the  causes  of 
thankfulness,  the  thoughts,  the  lessons,  and  the  warn- 
ings which  are  involved  in  the  social,  the  political,  or  the 
religious  conditions  which  are  right  around  us. 

With  this  feeUng,  I  should  like  to  say  a  few  words  this 
moruing  upon  the  religious  conditions  with  which  we  are 


168  THE   PRESENT  AND  FUTURE   FAITH. 

all  more  or  less  familiar.  I  am  led  to  think  and  speak  ol 
the  disturbed  condition  of  faith  in  our  time.  No  subject 
is  more  pressing.  Even  the  most  careless  man's  thoughts 
rest  very  much  upon  it.  It  is  discussed  and  talked  of 
everywhere.  And  it  is  most  important.  One  may  very 
clearly  say,  that  if  there  is  no  cause  for  gratitude  and 
hope  in  the  state  of  religious  life,  then,  whatever  other 
blessings  may  be  showered  out  around  us,  to  the  deepest 
sense,  and  to  the  most  serious  men,  a  Thanksgiving  Day 
becomes  a  mockery.  Let  us  see  then  what  there  is  that 
we  can  understand  about  the  disturbed  and  tumultuous 
faith  of  our  strange  times. 

"  When  the  Son  of  Man  cometh  shall  He  find  faith  on 
the  earth  ?  "  was  Jesus's  question.  There  have  always 
been  two  different  opinions  among  people  who  looked  for 
a  final  perfection  of  all  things  under  the  Christian  faith. 
One  class  of  men  has  held  that  the  perfecting  state  of 
things  was  already  begun,  and  that  everything  would  go 
on  developing  and  improving  till  the  glorious  consumma- 
tion should  be  reached.  The  other  class  has  always  held 
that  matters  were  continually  getting  worse  and  worse, 
and  must  go  on  decaying  and  degenerating  until  they 
touched  the  bottom  of  corruption,  and  then  by  some  law 
of  reaction  and  replacement  an  upward  movement  must 
begin,  and  perfection  speedily  arrive.  It  is  one  of  the 
strangest  things,  I  think,  about  the  world  and  its  history, 
that  the  advocates  of  each  of  these  opinions  have  alike 
been  able  to  find  corroboration  of  what  they  believed  in 
the  things  about  them.  One  man  has  waved  his  hand 
enthusiastically  over  human  history,  and  said,  "  See  how 
everything  is  improving.  It  will  be  perfect  before  long. 
It  has  only  to  keep  on."     Another  man  standing  right 


THE  PRESENT  AND  FUTUBE  FAITH.        159 

Dy  bis  siie,  pointing  to  the  same  history,  says,  "  You  see 
that  everything  is  getting  worse  and  -worse.  The  only 
hope  is  that  it  will  get  as  bad  as  possible,  and  be  de- 
stroyed, and  then  something  better  can  come  in."  And 
the  strange  thing  is  that  both  of  them  find  in  the  self- 
same world  abundant  confirmations  of  their  theories. 
The  facts  must  be  very  remarkably  involved  and  mixed 
3ut  of  which  two  such  different  inferences  can  be  drawn, 
on  which  two  such  different  anticipations  can  be  built. 

And  this  double  interpretation  of  human  history  does 
not  come  merely  from  the  different  characters  of  differ- 
ent ages.  Both  theories  find  confirmation  in  every  age. 
Both  are  confirmed  by  some  things  that  men  see  in  this 
age  of  ours.  While  we  speak  of  the  darker  symptoms, 
the  signs  of  decaying  faith  in  our  own  time,  we  must  not 
forget  that  there  are  other  symptoms  of  a  brighter  sort 
which  make  men  hopeful  of  the  future  of  their  race, — 
more  hopeful,  probably,  in  these  anxious  days  than  men 
have  ever  been  before.     Let  us  bear  this  in  mind. 

The  lack  of  faith,  or  the  disturbance  of  faith,  which  ia 
such  a  serious  feature  of  our  times,  is  very  manifold  and 
puzzling  in  its  influences,  but  is  very  simple  in  its  nature 
and  causes.  It  is  traceable,  almost  everywhere,  to  the 
wonderful  increase  of  men's  knowledge  of  second  causes, 
interfering  with,  or  overclouding  their  belief  in  first 
causes,  in  principles,  in  providences,  in  a  personal  and 
loving  care  back  of  everything.  It  comes  to  many  things, 
but  this  is  where  it  all  comes  from.  This  is  where  liei 
the  certain  amount  of  truth  which  is  in  the  statement 
ihat  times  of  ignorance  are  times  of  faith.  No  doubt  it 
is  easier  for  men  who  have  learned  nothing  of  the  mar- 
vellous way  in  which  every  object  in  nature  is  made  a 


160  THE  PRESENT   AND  FUTURE  FAITH. 

reservoir  and  a  distributer  of  force,  to  look  back  straight 
into  the  face  of  the  Sovereign  Will  out  of  which  all  force 
originally  proceeds.  It  is  easier  for  the  savage,  with  hia 
chief  standing  over  him,  ready  to  strike  him  down  with 
his  club  if  he  disobeys,  to  realize  and  believe  in  govern* 
ment,  than  it  is  for  the  citizen  of  a  highly  organized 
state  who  is  reached  by  the  authority  which  is  at  the 
head  of  all  only  through  many  subordinate  agencies  and 
by  nicely  adjusted  relationships.  So  that  there  is  some 
truth  in  the  statement  that  much  knowledge  and  elabo- 
rate life  are  dangerous  to  faith  in  final  principles  and 
forces.  The  more  our  mind  is  fastened  upon  second 
causes,  the  more  danger  there  is  that  it  will  fail  to  reach 
the  great  first  cause.  It  is  a  danger  to  be  met,  not  one 
to  be  avoided  ;  but  it  is  one,  in  the  first  place,  to  be  rec- 
ognized very  clearly.  I  need  not  try  to  tell  the  magnifi- 
cent story  of  how  natural  science  has  brought  out  the 
starry  host  of  second  causes  from  their  obscurity,  and 
shown  how  He  who  works  everything,  works  by  every- 
thing in  all  the  world.  We  all  know  something  of  it; 
and  we  know,  too,  how  the  profuse  discovery  of  means 
has  in  our  times  clouded  the  thought  of  the  maker  in 
many  minds.  We  know  this,  and  I  need  not  dwell  on  it. 
But  I  am  anxious  to  point  out  that  there  are  other  skep- 
ticisms, other  derangements  of  faith  besides  those  which 
belong  to  the  region  of  natural  science,  which  yet  have 
essentially  the  same  character  and  origin.  It  may  sound 
strange  and  fanciful  to  say  that  those  two  evils  of  which 
we  hear  so  much,  corruption  in  political  life  and  formal- 
ism in  church  life,  are  really  one,  at  bottom,  with  the  sci- 
entific skepticism  of  our  time  ;  but  if  one  looks  at  them 
philosophically  he  must  see  that  it  is  truly  so.     Corrup* 


THE  PEESENT  ANB  FUTURE  FAITH.        161 

rifn  in  poi'tical  life  is  really  skepticism.  It  is  a  diatrust, 
a  disuse  wliich  has  lasted  so  long  that  it  has  grown  into 
disbelief  of  political  principles,  of  the  first  fundamen- 
tal truths  of  the  sacredness  of  government  and  the  ne- 
cessity of  righteousness.  And  where  has  such  a  disbe- 
lief come  from  ?  We  all  know  well  enough.  It  is  from 
the  narrow  view  which  has  looked  at  machineries,  and 
magnified  them  till  they  have  hid  from  view  the  great 
purposes  for  which  all  machineries  exist.  If  a  man  tells  •^ 
me  that  it  is  absolutely  necessary  that  such  or  such  a 
political  party  should  be  maintained  whether  its  acts  and 
its  men  are  righteous  oi  unrighteous,  or  else  the  govern- 
ment will  fall,  that  man  is  an  unbeliever.  He  has  lost 
his  faith  in  the  first  principles  of  government,  and  he 
has  lost  it  by  persistently  tying  down  his  study  and  his 
soul  to  second  causes,  to  the  mere  machinery  of  party. 
And  so  in  church  and  religious  matters,  when  they  are 
invaded  by  formalism.  When  a  man  tells  me  that  re 
ligion  cannot  stand  unless  the  church  be  just  so  organ 
Ized,  or  that  God  will  be  lost  out  of  men's  thoughts  un 
less  you  teach  certain  traditional  things  about  Him,  and 
worship  Him  with  a  certain  ritual,  that  man  seems  to 
me  to  be  an  unbeliever  of  the  most  dangerous  kind.  He 
has  lost  his  real  faith  in  God  and  Christianity  and  the 
church  by  his  very  devotion  to  the  means,  or  second 
causes,  through  which  they  work.  When  I  heard  an 
English  bishop  preach,  this  summer,  that  it  was  neces- 
iiary  to  maintain  a  particular  mode  of  burying  the  dead, 
for  fear  of  disturbing  men's  belief  in  the  doctrine  of  the 
resurrection  of  the  body,  that  preaching  seemed  to  me  to 
'ndicate  a  lack  of  faith  in  the  real  essential  truth  and 
power  of  the  doctrine,  which  could  not  be  surpassed  by 
u 


162  THE  PRESENT  AND   FUTURE   FAITH. 

any  skeptic.  And  so  it  is  always.  Our  jealousy  for  cep 
tain  forms,  our  magnifying  their  importance,  our  feai 
that  Christianity  will  not  stand  if  we  do  not  state  and 
otter  it  just  so,  — what  is  it  all  at  the  bottom  but  a  lack 
of  faith  in  Chi-istianity  itself,  in  its  vital  power  and  itfc 
original  truth  ?  Dogmatism  and  ritualism  are  all  wi'ong 
when  they  think  themselves  supremely  believing.  Both 
are  really  symptomatic  forms  of  unbelief.  Whenever  a 
man  believes  that  only  his  machinery  can  save  the  na- 
tion or  the  church,  he  is  a  disbeliever  in  the  vital  force  by 
which  the  nation  or  the  church  lives. 

Have  we  not  here,  then,  the  general  character  of  the 
unbelief  or  feeble  faith  of  this  strange  century  in  which 
we  live  ?  It  is  that  which  naturally  belongs  to  a  much 
discovering,  much  questioning,  much  reading  age,  an  age 
critical  and  inquisitive.  It  comes  from  such  a  multipli- 
cation of  details  and  methods  as  hides  principles  and 
purposes  out  of  sight.  The  naturalist  is  so  busy  with  the 
system  of  nature  that  he  rests  there,  and  loses  God.  The 
politician  is  so  busy  with  the  machinery  of  party  that  he 
stops  there  and  loses  patriotism  and  justice.  The  wor- 
shipper is  so  busy  with  the  details  of  worship  that  he  livea 
in  them,  and  loses  Christ.  In  all  you  see  it  is  essentially 
the  same,  —  the  disbelief  of  a  critical  and  cultured  time. 
That  it  is  different  from  the  disbelief  of  other  times  there 
can  be  no  doubt.  It  is  more  subtle,  more  serious,  and  so 
perhaps  more  persistent  ard  dangerous.  When  we  say 
that  it  is  more  widespread  we  are  very  apt  to  be  deceived. 
We  are  apt  to  think  that  our  time  has  less  faith  than  the 
ages  that  have  gone  before,  but  erzoh  an  opinion  very  com- 
monly comes  from  some  idealizing  of  the  past.  The  world 
ifi  like  a  growing  man  in  many  ways.     It  looks  back  to 


THE  PRESENT  AND  FUTURE  FAITH.        163 

ith  childhood,  and  sees  that  childhood  flooded  with  a  glory 
which  it  did  not  have  when  it  was  present.  As  it  seems  to 
every  man  as  if  his  boyhood  were  more  religious  than  hia 
manhood  has  become,  so  it  seems  to  the  world  always  aa 
if  there  were  some  past  age,  some  blessed  time,  primitive 
or  mediaeval,  when  faith  was  universal,  calm,  and  abso- 
lute. Both  are  mere  dreams.  You  cannot  find  the  age« 
of  faith  if  you  look  carefully  back  through  history.  The 
disturbances  of  faith  in  other  times  have  been  different 
from  ours,  but  there  have  always  been  disturbances,  and 
whether  they  have  been  greater  or  less  than  ours  no  man 
can  say  ;  for  who  can  really  know  the  mental  troubles  of 
any  other  time  except  his  own  ? 

I  am  inclined  to  think  that  such  a  statement  of  the 
character  of  our  time  and  of  the  nature  of  its  skepticism 
will  not  satisfy  many  people.  I  think  that  many  people 
are  under  the  impression,  not  merely  that  certain  causes 
have  turned  aside  the  power  of  implicit  faith  from  its 
true  objects,  but  that  the  whole  power  of  enthusiastic 
faith  is  sick,  if  indeed  it  be  not  dead.  They  point  us 
to  the  prosaicalness  of  everything.  They  complain  that 
there  is  nothing  noble.  They  would  depict  their  century 
as  if  it  were  given  up  entirely  to  low  economies,  merely 
prudent,  safe,  scheming,  well-to-do,  with  nothing  of  the 
romantic  generosity  and  enterprise  of  other  days.  "  That 
is  what  is  really  at  the  bottom  of  the  decay  of  religious 
and  political  faith,"  they  say.  So  I  suppose  every  age 
has  looked  to  the  men  who  lived  in  it.  But  when  we  ask 
whether  such  a  charge  is  really  true  about  the  age  we 
live  in,  I  think  we  are  surpi-ised  to  find  how  astonish- 
ingly untrue  it  is.  It  seems  as  if  there  had  hardly  ever 
been  any  century  which  would  send  down  into  history 


164  THE  PRESENT  AND  FUTURE  FAITH. 

more  romantic  ptissi^es,  more  heroic  and  poetic  deeds 
than  just  this  prosaic  nineteenth  century  in  which  we  Hve. 
We  are  astonished  when  we  count  them  over.  When  w** 
think  of  the  adventure  of  our  time  ;  when  we  recall  th« 
great  Arctic  explorations  that  have  called  forth  an  endur- 
ance and  daring  which  have  been  unsurpassed  in  other 
days  ;  when  we  remember  the  picturesque  meetings  of 
strange  peoples,  which  the  advance  of  civiliyation  has 
brought  about,  —  the  meeting  of  England  and  Russia  face 
to  face  in  Central  Asia,  the  meeting  of  Anglo-Saxon  and 
Chinaman  on  the  Pacific  shore,  the  meeting  of  New  Eug- 
lander  and  Indian  upon  the  prairies  ;  when  we  consider 
the  history  of  slavery  in  this  country  with  all  the  passion- 
ate experience  that  it  created,  the  tragedies  of  private  life, 
the  miracles  of  self-devotion,  and  the  convulsive  revolution 
with  which  it  shook  the  land ;  when  we  consider  these 
things  and  a  thousand  others,  what  is  there  that  is  more 
romantic  than  they  are  in  any  history  of  any  age  ?  What 
is  there  anywhere  more  poetic,  anything  that  more  ap- 
peals to  the  imagination  than  the  brilliant  advance  of  nat- 
ural science  ?  What  is  there  in  chivalry  more  exalted  and 
thrilling  than  the  lives  of  men  who  have  lived  and  died  in 
privation  and  delight  for  science  and  its  progress  ?  When 
have  men  ever  proved  themselves  more  capable  of  lofty 
and  large  ideas  than  in  these  days,  when  they  are  dream- 
ing of  a  "  federation  of  mankind,"  war  replaced  by  peace* 
ful  arbitrati'^n,  and  criminals  reformed  by  industry  and 
kindness,  ana  poverty  obliterated  by  universal  organizeHl 
charity  ?  No  crusade  of  the  middle  ages  has  anything 
Uke  the  real  romantic  inspiration  that  belongs  to  the 
modern  crusade  against  ignorance,  —  the  dream  of  uni- 
versal education.     No  old  vision  of  a  splendid  feudalisn/ 


THE  PRESENT  AND  FUTURE  FAITH.        165 

80  taxed  and  exalted  the  imagination  as  the  modem 
picture  of  self-government.  No  !  It  is  not  that  our  age 
is  sordid.  It  is  not  that  it  has  proved  itself  incapable 
of  large  ideas  and  glowing  visions.  It  has  a  romance 
brighter  than  any  other  age  ever  possessed.  And  so  long 
as  it  has  that,  it  has  not  lost  the  capacity  of  faith,  —  the 
appetite  and  love  for  the  unseen  and  transcendental. 

Let  us  sum  up,  then,  some  of  the  characteristics  of  our 
confused  time.  It  is  certainly  one  of  the  most  interesting 
times  in  which  a  man  could  have  been  sent  into  the  world 
to  live.  It  is  full  of  contradictions.  On  the  one  hand, 
it  has  accumulated  an  immense  knowledge  of  details  and 
second  causes  which  have  made  it  hard  to  look  beyond  to 
principles  and  the  first  origin  of  things.  On  the  other 
hand,  it  has  struggled  with  the  principles  of  life  with  most 
ambitious  curiosity.  It  combines  immense  material  de- 
velopment with  great  susceptibility  to  spiritual  influences. 
It  has  disowned  the  older  forms  of  authority,  so  that  the 
thunders  of  a  Roman  anathema  peal  harmlessly  through 
its  clear  atmosphere,  and  at  the  same  time  it  has  become 
8o  conscious  of  the  largeness  of  truth  that  it  is  willing  to 
listen  to  almost  any  confident  charlatan  who  claims  to  be 
its  teacher,  —  the  most  practical  and  the  most  visionary, 
the  most  hard-headed  and  the  most  soft-hearted,  the  most 
positive  and  the  most  perplexed,  the  most  desponding 
and  the  most  eager,  the  most  independent  and  the  most 
credulous  of  all  the  ages  that  the  world  has  seen. 

We  are  in  the  habit  of  hearing  all  this  character  of  oui 
age  summed  up  in  the  statement  that  it  is  a  "  transition 
time."  It  rather  gets  its  character  from  its  relation  to 
what  has  gone  before  it,  and  what  is  to  come  after  it, 
than  from  what  it  contains  within  itself.     This  is  what 


166  THE  PRESENT  AND   FUTURE  FAITH. 

gives  it  so  much  of  an  aspect  of  restlessness  and  unquiet, 
It  is  full  of  the  sense  of  having  in  many  waj^s  brokeii 
with  the  past,  and  of  having  not  yet  thoroughly  appre- 
hended the  future  that  is  to  come.  It  is  not  the  happiest 
frame  of  life.  The  description  that  one  of  its  thinkers, 
the  subtlest  and  most  characteristic  perhaps  of  all  of 
them,  has  given  of  himself  tells  well  enough  the  story  of 
the  age,  — 

"  Wandering  between  two  worlds,  one  dead 
The  other  powerl&ss  to  be  born, 
With  nowhere  yet  to  rest  my  head 
Like  these  on  earth  I  wait  forlorn." 

And  yet  the  forlornness  of  such  a  mood  is  always 
brightened  by  the  persistent  conviction  that  there  is  a 
future,  and  that  what  there  is  to  come,  hard  as  it  is  to  ap- 
prehend, will  certainly  be  apprehended  some  day.  If  wa 
described  the  whole  life  of  the  world,  as  has  often  been 
done,  as  if  it  were  the  continuous  life  of  one  growing 
man,  this  age  of  ours  must  correspond,  we  think,  just  to 
the  point  where  youth  is  passing  into  manhood.  Out 
world  now  seems  to  me  to  be  wonderfully  like  a  high- 
spirited  young  man  of  twenty-one  years  old.  It  is  just 
coming  of  age.  It  has  all  the  characters  and  moods  that 
belong  to  that  most  interesting  and  perplexing  creature. 
It  has  all  his  remonstrance  against  the  tyranny  of  the 
past ;  all  his  self-confidence,  and  at  the ,  same  time  all  his 
self-disgusts ;  all  his  self-reliance,  with  yet  all  his  feeble- 
ness ;  his  hope,  his  petulance,  his  self-indulgence ;  his  crav- 
ing for  the  definite,  and  his  delight  in  what  is  vague-  his 
passion  for  the  real  and  the  ideal  together;  his  satisfaction 
in  the  present,  and  at  the  same  time  his  eager  and  impa- 
tient expectation  of  what  is  to  come ;  full  of  silent  mR<xU 


THE  PRESENT   AND  FDTTJEE  FAITH.  167 

and  yet  full  of  exuberant  spirits ;  reckless  and  defiant,  yet 
wonderfully  capable  of  tenderness.  Altogether  the  same 
unsatisfied,  unsatisfactory,  and  interesting  creature. 

And  now  of  your  young  man  of  twenty-one  what  do 
you  expect  ?  Interesting  as  he  is,  he  cannot  stay  what  he 
is ;  and  certainly  he  cannot  go  back  into  any  of  the  lost 
conditions  of  his  boyhood  and  his  babyhood  again.  He 
must  go  forward ;  all  these  new  thoughts  and  passions 
which  have  come  into  him  since  he  was  fifteen,  and  which 
now  are  seething  in  confusion,  must  find  their  places  and 
proportions  to  one  another,  and  a  new  peace  of  higher 
adjustments  must  come,  —  the  peace  of  harmonized  and 
well  balanced  manhood.  And  just  exactly  so  it  must  be 
with  our  twenty-one  years'  old  world.  An  age  of  transi- 
tion of  course  is  temporary.  It  cannot  stay  just  what  it 
is.  An  everlasting  nineteenth  century  would  be  intolera- 
ble. But  on  the  other  hand  it  cannot  go  back  into  boy- 
bood  or  babyhood  again.  The  man  who,  tired  of  the 
freedom  of  individual  thought,  wants  to  push  the  church 
back  into  the  peace  of  mere  authoritative  and  traditional 
religion,  and  the  man  who,  tired  of  the  noise  and  confu- 
sion of  popular  government,  wishes  to  push  man  back  into 
feudalism,  both  are  mistaken  and  neither  will  succeed. 
Confusion  is  to  be  escaped  not  by  being  repressed  into 
stagnation  but  by  being  developed  into  peace.  Surely 
t  is  no  weak  optimism  to  believe  that  such  a  development 
must  come  —  an  age  critical  but  not  irreverent,  and  rev- 
erent without  superstition,  full  of  positive  belief  and  of 
tolerant  charity,  in  which  yet  neither  interferes  with  noi 
deadens  the  other. 

"  There  maj  perhaps  jet  dawn  an  ago 
More  fortunate,  alaa  1  than  we. 


168  THE  PRESENT   AND   FUTURE  FAITH. 

Which  without  hardness  may  be  sage. 
And  gay  without  friyolity." 

No  eleaents  whicli  you  propose  to  mix  combine  per* 
fectly  at  once.  You  drop  your  salt  into  water  and  it  lies 
crude  and  undissolved  at  first ;  by  and  by  the  water  takes 
it  in  and  the  two  are  one.  Into  a  world  which  has  been 
governed  by  authority  you  throw  strong  notions  of  lib- 
erty and  personal  independence.  They  lie  crudely  to- 
gether at  first,  as  they  are  lying  now ;  but  they  must  ul- 
timately be  assimilated,  and  a  freer  judgment  as  to  what 
authority  it  is  right  to  obey  must  be  united  vrith  a  more 
loyal  obedience  to  the  authority  that  has  been  willingly 
acknowledged.  That  is  the  future  for  which  we  have  » 
right  to  hope. 

The  most  pathetic  sign  of  such  a  transition  time  is  in 
the  position  in  which  it  places  the  best  individuals  who 
live  in  it.  The  best  men  in  the  more  fixed  and  station- 
ary ages  speak  out  the  loudest.  They  stand  on  certain- 
ties, and  speak  vdth  clear  and  confident  tones.  The 
most  noticeable  and  touching  thing  about  such  times  as 
ours  is  the  way  in  which  so  many  of  the  best  men  are 
silent  and  will  not  speak.  It  is  so  both  in  politics  and  in 
religion.  The  most  thoughtful  men  are  always  tending 
to  withdraw  from  a  political  confusion  which  they  cannot 
understand,  and  make  themselves  mere  spectators.  And 
how  many  of  the  purest  and  devoutest  people  whom  we 
know  refuse  to  speak  a  word  in  all  the  tumult  of  religious 
and  ecclesiastical  debate,  that  always  is  so  loud  around 
OS.  To  take  again  the  words  of  a  very  remarkable  poem 
of  that  most  representative  poet  of  our  time,  whom  I 
have  twice  quoted  already :  — 


THE   PRESENT   AND   FUTURE   FAITH.  169 

"  Achilles  ponders  in  his  tent, 

The  kings  of  modem  thonght  are  damb, 

Silent  they  are,  though  not  content, 
And  wait  to  see  the  future  come. 

Silent,  while  years  engrave  the  hrow, 

Silent,  the  beat  are  silent  now." 

We  all  feel  certainly  a  disposition  of  the  best  ard  deep 
est  part  of  us  to  share  this  silence,  to  be  stiU  and  wait. 
And  when  the  most  representative  men,  the  men  most  in 
the  spirit  of  our  time  do  speak,  it  is  not  strange  that  they 
should  be  confused  and  often  self-contradictory.  It  is  not 
strange,  it  is  most  suggestive  and  instructive,  that  hardly 
any  thinker  should  be  wholly  self -consistent ;  that  the 
most  thoughtful  men  should  say  things  and  then  take 
them  back,  or  explain  them  away;  should  lay  themselves 
open  to  charges,  and  then  deny  that  they  deserve  them, 
and  so  puzzle  both  their  friends  and  enemies.  It  is  the 
natural  symptom  of  a  time  that  is  not  sure  how  much  of 
the  past  is  good,  and  not  sure  what  there  is  waiting  in  the 
future ;  a  time  and  men  "  wandering  between  two  worlds, 
one  dead,  the  other  powerless  to  be  born." 

I  do  not  certainly  say  that  such  a  time  is  best,  though 
really  in  my  heart  I  do  not  think  the  world  has  ever  seen 
a  bettor.  There  must  be  better  ones  to  come.  The  story 
of  the  world  is  not  told  yet.  "  We  are  ancients  of  the 
earth  and  in  the  morning  of  the  times."  But  I  have  only 
tried  to  see  as  clearly  as  I  could  what  all  these  symptoms, 
of  which  our  most  serious  books  and  our  morning  news- 
papers alike  are  full,  really  mean,  and  what  place  this 
bewildering  age  of  ours  does  probably  hold  in  the  long 
series  of  the  ages.  The  character  that  I  have  drawn  of 
it  in  these  mere  fragmentary  suggestions  is  not  the  mere 
picture  of  a  theory.     It  is  a  character  frhich  breaks  out 


170  THE   PRESENT   AND   FUTURE   FAITH. 

everywhere.  I  see  it  in  every  book  I  read,  in  the  action 
of  every  public  man  I  watch.  I  hear  it  in  every  discus* 
sion  of  any  serious  question,  and  in  the  lightest  talk  I 
hold  with  any  of  you  at  your  own  firesides.  It  is  not 
that  my  account  of  it  is  not  true,  but  only  that  I  have 
failed  to  state  it  as  I  see  it,  if  you  have  not  recognized 
the  picture. 

And  now  the  question  comes  which  is  most  personally 
pressing.  How  in  a  time  like  this  can  a  man  live  and 
get  the  best  out  of  it,  and  at  the  same  time  shun  ita 
worst?  Here  in  this  time  of  uncertainties,  here  in  this 
wandering  transition  age,  we  are  to  live,  whether  we  will 
or  no.  We  did  not  choose  our  time.  We  may  wish  and 
wish  in  vain  that  we  had  been  born  centuries  ago  when,  aa 
we  vainly  think,  no  man  doubted,  and  all  men  were  sat- 
isfied. But  here  we  are,  not  there.  And  what  can  one 
do  with  his  own  personal  life  to  keep  it  from  complete 
confusion,  and  if  it  be  possible  to  make  it  grow  strong 
and  rich  and  true,  out  of  these  very  circumstances  which 
perhaps,  we  hopelessly  deplore  ? 

One  answer  only  I  can  give,  and  that  is  very  simple. 
In  all  the  uncertainty  and  change  it  is  the  true  man's 
place  to  find  what  there  is  that  is  permanent  and  certain, 
and  to  cling  to  that.  In  other  sorts  of  times  men  do  not 
distinguish  between  what  is  lasting  and  what  is  transitory. 
All  seems  fixed  together.  Ice  and  rock  alike  are  solid. 
In  times  like  these,  when  the  ice  breaks  up,  the  rocks  stand 
out  solid  and  strong  among  the  loosened  waves.  It  is  a 
time  to  find  out  what  is  sure  and  certain  and  eternal. 

Let  me  try  to  tell  you  in  a  few  words  what  it  seems  to 
me  are  the  solid  things  to  which  a  man  may  cling.  First 
and  moat  prominent,  because  most  superficial,  is  the  solid* 


THE  PRESENT  AND   FUTUBE  FAITH.  171 

Ity  and  persistency  of  nature,  the  calmness  and  oldnesa 
ani  orderliness  of  this  world  of  growth  and  matter.  It 
means  something  that,  in  the  disorder  of  thought  and 
feeling,  so  many  men  are  fleeing  to  the  study  of  orderly 
nature.  And  it  is  rest  and  comfort.  Whatever  men  ai-e 
feeling,  the  seasons  come  and  go.  Whatever  men  are 
doubting,  the  rock  is  firm  under  their  feet,  and  the  stead- 
fast stars  pass  in  their  certain  courses  overhead.  Men 
who  dare  count  on  nothing  else  may  still  count  on  the 
tree's  blossoming  and  the  grape  coloring.  It  is  good  for 
a  man  perplexed  and  lost  among  many  thoughts  to  come 
into  closer  intercourse  with  Nature,  and  to  learn  her 
ways  and  to  catch  her  spirit.  It  is  no  fancy  to  believe 
that  if  the  children  of  this  generation  are  taught  a  great 
deal  more  than  we  used  to  be  taught  of  nature,  and  the 
ways  of  God  in  nature,  they  will  be  provided  with  the 
material  for  far  healthier,  happier,  and  less  perplexed 
and  anxious  lives  than  most  of  us  are  living. 

And  secondly,  it  surely  is  a  time  when  one  ought  to 
make  much  of  the  experiences  of  life  which  are  perpetual, 
and  so  which  always  bring  us  back  to  something  solid. 
Joy,  sorrow,  friendship,  work,  charity,  these  are  eternal. 
They  do  not  change  with  changing  times  ;  and  if  a  man 
throws  himself  heartily  into  the  life  of  his  fellow-men  and 
takes  the  pleasures  and  the  pains  that  come  out  of  the 
touchings  of  his  life  with  theirs,  he  is  brought  into  associ- 
ation with  these  unchanging  verities,  and  his  own  life  be- 
comes less  oppressively  unruly.  Have  you  never  known 
something  of  this  ?  Have  you  not  sometimes,  when  most 
perplexed  and  bewildered  with  many  thoughts,  found 
refuge,  strength,  health,  and  peace  in  mere  return  from 
iolitude  to  those  relations  with  your  brethren  for  which 


172  THE  PRESENT   AND   FUTURE   FAITH. 

man  was  made  ?  A  joy  that  comes  by  humau  company, 
even  a  sorrow  which  has  its  root  in  a  true  human  love, 
brings  a  man  back  from  the  solitude  which  is  not  good  for 
him,  and  which  is  haunted  with  perplexity.  It  puts  him 
again  into  company  with  the  humanity  which  has  known 
j  oy  and  sorrow  all  through  its  changing  life.  Never  was 
there  a  time  when  a  man  more  needed  the  help  and 
strength  of  simple,  kindly,  familiar  life  among  his  fel- 
low-men. 

And  the  next  thing  which  is  permanent,  and  which  a 
man  ought  to  cling  to  with  special  closeness  now,  is  duty. 
How  old  it  is,  how  strong  and  sure !  How  strong  it 
makes  us  when  we  think  that  this  same  simple,  single 
instinct  of  right  and  wrong,  which  makes  us  do  our  act 
to-day,  is  precisely  the  same  instinct  that  made  men  hon- 
est and  kept  them  pure  before  the  Flood.  So  many  of 
the  perplexities  of  our  time  ai*e  on  the  surface.  They  do 
act  reach  down  to  where  the  conscience  lies  calm  and 
serene  below.  And  when  "  this  unchartered  freedom 
tires,"  when  we  "  feel  the  weight  of  chance  desires,"  it 
is  good  to  supplicate  for  the  control  of  duty,  and  find  a 
"  repose  that  ever  is  the  same."  When  a  man,  lost  and 
confused,  comes  to  you  saying,  "  How  can  one  live  in  such 
a  time  as  this ?  What  shall  I  do?"  Answer  him  first  of 
all  simply  and  strongly,  "  Do  right !  Do  your  duty  I  " 
and  you  have  given  him  at  least  one  sure  thing  among 
fell  that  is  unsure. 

But  then,  above  all  things,  there  is  the  strength  and 
permanence  of  rehgion.  Never  was  there  such  a  time  for 
a  man  to  cling  to  that.  "  Ah,  but,"  you  say,  "  that  is 
the  most  uncertain  of  all  things  1  What  is  more  unset- 
tled than  religion?"     But  no,  my  friends.     There  may 


THE  PRESENT   AND   FUTURE   FAITH.  173 

be  many  thoughts  about  religion  that  are  not  clear,  but 
religion  itself,  nay,  Christianity  itself,  is  sure,  and  now  is 
just  the  time  for  souls  to  come  to  a  more  certain  hold 
upon,  as  they  come  to  a  simpler  conception  of  its  truth. 
The  knowledge  that  love  is  at  the  root  of  everything 
the  answer  of  the  human  soul  to  the  appealing  nature 
and  life  of  Jesus  Christ ;  the  value  of  the  soul  above  the 
body,  of  the  character  above  the  circumstances  ;  and  the 
eternal  life,  these  are  what  men  may  cling  to.  If  any 
man  does  cling  to  these,  he  is  really  upon  a  rock,  and 
whatever  else  which  he  thought  was  rock  may  prove  to 
be  ice  and  melt  away,  here  he  is  safe.  Here  is  the  great, 
last  certainty.  Be  sure  of  God.  With  simple,  loving  wor- 
ship, by  continual  obedience,  by  purifying  yourself  even 
as  He  is  pure,  creep  close,  keep  close  to  Him.  Be  sure 
of  God  and  nothing  can  overthrow  or  drown  you. 

And  so  let  us  give  thanks  to  God  upon  Thanksgiving 
Day.  Nature  is  beautiful,  and  fellow-men  are  dear,  and 
duty  is  close  beside  us,  and  He  is  over  us  and  in  us. 
What  more  do  we  want,  except  to  be  more  thankful  and 
more  faithful,  less  complaining  of  our  trials  and  our  time, 
and  more  worthy  of  the  tasks  and  privileges  He  has  given 
us.  We  want  to  trust  Him  with  a  fuller  trust,  and  so  at 
last  to  come  to  that  high  life  where  we  shall  "  Be  careful 
for  nothing,  but  in  everything,  by  prayer  and  supplica- 
tion, with  thanksgiving,  let  our  request  be  made  known 
into  God,"  for  that  and  that  alone  is  peace. 


tJNSPOTTED  FROM  THE  WORLD. 

*  And  tvJ  keep  limself  unspotted  from  the  world."  —  James  L  87 

Men  and  women  grow  older  in  this  world  of  ours,  and 
as  the  years  advance  they  change.  Of  all  the  changes 
that  they  undergo  those  of  their  moral  natures  are  the 
most  painful  to  watch.  The  boy  changes  into  the  man, 
and  there  is  something  lost  which  never  seems  to  come 
back  again.  It  is  like  the  first  glow  of  the  morning  that 
passes  away  —  like  the  bloom  on  the  blossom  that  never 
is  restored.  Your  grown  up  boy  is  wise  in  bad  things 
which  he  used  to  know  nothing  about.  He  has  a  hard 
conscience  now,  instead  of  the  soft  and  tender  one  he 
used  to  cany.  He  is  scornful  about  sacred  things,  instead 
of  devout  as  he  was  once.  He  is  no  longer  gentle,  but 
cruel ;  no  longer  earnest,  but  flippant ;  no  longer  enthusi- 
astic, but  cynical.  He  tolerates  evils  that  he  used  to  hate. 
He  makes  excuses  for  pass'ons  that  he  once  thought  were 
horrible.  He  qualifies  and  limits  the  absolute  standards 
of  truthfulness  and  purity.  He  has  changed.  His  life 
no  longer  sounds  with  a  perfectly  clear  ring,  or  shines 
with  a  perfectly  white  lustre.    He  is  no  longer  unspotted. 

And  then  when  a  grown  man  sees  and  knows  all  this 
either  in  himself  or  in  another,  he  is  sure  also  that  the 
change  has  come  somehow  from  this  boy  having  grown 
up  to  manhood  in  the  midst  of  his  fellow-men.     We  al) 


UN^POTTED   FROM   THE  WORLD.  175 

have  a  dim  kind  of  belief  that  if  we  could  have  taken 
that  life  and  isolated  it,  it  would  not  have  grown  so  bad. 
We  could  have  kept  its  freshness  and  its  purity  in  it  if 
we  could  have  kept  it  to  itself.  We  grant  that  there 
is  evil  in  the  heart,  but  we  do  not  believe  that  the  mere 
fermentation  of  that  evil  in  itself  could  have  come  to  all 
this.  The  manhood  has  had  to  grow  here  in  this  great 
universal  mass  of  things,  this  total  of  many  various  in- 
fluences which  we  call  "  the  world."  Home,  school,  busi- 
ness, society,  politics,  human  life  in  general  in  all  its 
various  activities,  —  out  of  this  have  come  the  evil  forces 
that  have  changed  and  soiled  this  life.  It  has  not  been 
himself.  He  has  walked  through  mire,  and  the  filth  has 
gathered  on  his  skirts.  He  has  walked  through  pesti- 
lence, and  the  poison  has  crept  into  his  blood.  We  all 
think  of  ourselves,  and  in  our  kinder  moments  think  of 
«ur  brethren,  as  victims.  We  have  not  cast  away  the 
jewel,  but  we  have  fallen  among  thieves,  and  it  has  been 
taken  from  us.  Not  merely  the  evil  heart  within  us  has 
shown  its  wickedness,  but  the  evil  that  is  around  us  has 
fastened  to  us.  We  have  not  merely  been  spotted,  but 
*'  spotted  by  the  world." 

There  is  something  very  sublime,  I  think,  in  the  Bible 
lonception  of  "  The  World  "  which  we  are  always  meet- 
ing. It  seems  to  bear  witness  to  the  Bible's  truth  when 
we  are  able  to  gather  from  it  such  a  complete  conception 
of  this  mass  of  things  which  we  know  in  fragments,  and 
of  whose  unity  we  are  forever  catching  half-glimpses. 
The  Bible  touches  us  because  it  seems  to  know  all  about 
this  "  World,"  —  this  total  of  created  things,  this  cosmos, 
this  aggregate  of  disorder  with  purposes  of  order  mani- 
fest all  through  it,  this  %ea  of  tempest  with  its  tides  ol 


176  UNSPOTTED  FROM  THE  WORLD. 

law,  this  mixture  of  insignificant  trifles  with  the  most 
appalling  solemnities,  this  storehouse  of  life  and  activity 
and  influence  which  we  are  crowding  on  and  crowded  by 
every  day,  out  of  which  come  the  shaping  forces  of  our 
life,  which  we  call  the  world.  The  Bible  knows  all  about 
it,  and  so  we  listen  when  the  Bible  speaks. 

Here  then  we  have  our  fact.  Our  own  experience  dis- 
covers it.  The  Bible  steps  in  and  describes  it.  "  Lives 
spotted  by  the  world."  The  stained  lives.  Where  is  the 
man  or  woman  who  does  not  know  what  it  means  ?  There 
is  the  most  outward  sort  of  stain  —  the  stain  upon  the 
reputation.  It  is  what  men  see  as  they  pass  us,  and  know 
us  by  it  for  one  who  has  struggled  and  been  worsted. 
"What  man  has  come  to  middle  life,  and  kept  so  pure 
a  name  that  men  look  at  it  for  refreshment  and  cour- 
age as  they  pass  ?  When  we  remember  what  a  source  of 
strength  the  purest  reputations  in  the  world  have  always 
been,  what  a  stimulus  and  help,  then  we  get  some  idea 
of  what  the  world  loses  in  the  fact  that  almost  every  rep- 
utation becomes  so  blurred  and  spotted  that  it  is  wholly 
unfit  to  be  used  as  a  light  or  a  pattern  before  the  man 
is  old  enough  to  give  it  any  positive  character  or  force. 
Then  there  are  the  stains  upon  our  conduct,  the  impure 
and  untrue  acts  which  cross  and  cloud  the  fair  surface  of 
all  our  best  activity.  And  then,  far  worst  of  all,  there 
is  the  stain  upon  the  heart,  of  which  nobod}^  but  the  man 
himseK  knows  anything,  but  which  to  him  gives  all  their 
unbappiness  to  the  other  stains,  the  debased  motives,  the 
low  desires,  the  wicked  passions  of  the  inner  life.  These 
are  the  stains  which  we  accumulate.  We  set  out  for  the 
battle  in  the  morning  strong  and  clean.  By  and  by  we 
catch  a  moment  in  the  lull  of  the  struggle  to  look  down 


UNSPOTTED  FROM  THE  WORLD.  177 

upon  ourselves,  and  how  tired  and  how  covered  with 
dust  and  blood  we  are.  How  long  back  our  first  purity 
seems  —  how  long  the  day  seems  sometimes — how  long 
since  we  began  to  live.  You  know  what  stains  are  on 
your  lives.  Each  of  us  knows,  every  man  and  woman, 
as  we  are  here  this  morniLg.  They  burn  to  our  eyes 
even  if  no  neighbor  sees  them.  They  burn  in  the  still 
air  of  the  Sabbath  even  if  we  do  not  see  them  in  tha 
week.  You  would  not  think  for  the  world  that  your  chil- 
dren should  grow  up  to  the  same  stains  that  have  fast- 
ened upon  you.  You  dream  for  them  of  a  "life  un- 
spotted from  the  world,"  and  the  very  anxiety  of  that 
dream  proves  how  you  know  that  your  own  life  is  spotted 
and  stained. 

And  that  dream  for  the  children  is  almost  hopeless. 
At  any  rate  the  danger  is  that  you  will  give  it  up  by  and 
V>-v  fcisff  get  to  expecting  and  excusing  the  stains  that 
«vill  come  upon  them  as  they  gi'ow  older.  The  worst 
thing  about  all  this  staining  power  of  the  world  is  the 
way  in  which  we  come  to  think  of  it  as  inevitable.  We 
practically  believe  that  no  man  can  keep  himself  unspot- 
ted. He  must  accumulate  his  stains.  Hear  how  much 
there  is  of  this  low,  despairing  tone  on  every  side  of  us. 
You  talk  about  the  corruption  of  political  life  that  seema 
to  have  infected  the  safest  characters,  and  the  answer  is, 
"  Oh,  there  is  nothing  strange  about  it.  No  man  can  go 
through  that  trial  and  not  fall.  No  man  can  live  yearn 
in  Washington,  and  be  wholly  pure."  You  talk  with  a 
great  many  business  men  about  some  point  of  doubtful 
conventional  morality,  and  they  look  at  you  in  your  pro- 
fessional seclusion,  with  something  that  is  more  than  half 
pity.     "^  That  is  all  very  well  for  you,"  they  say,  "  bat 


178  UNSPOTTED   FBOM   THE  WOBLD. 

that  will  not  do  upon  the  street.  I  should  like  tx)  see 
you  try  to  apply  that  standard  to  the  work  I  have  to  do 
to  make  my  bread."  And  just  so  when  you  talk  about 
earnestness  to  the  mere  creature  of  society.  "It  is  a 
mere  dream,"  the  answer  is,  "  to  think  that  sociiU  life 
can  be  elevated  and  made  noble.  Whoever  goes  there 
must  expect  the  spots  upon  the  robe ;  and  so,  if  he  is 
wise,  will  go  with  robes  that  will  show  spots  as  little  as 
possible,  —  robes  as  near  the  world's  color  as  he  is  able 
to  procure."  It  is  not  true.  Men  do  go  through  polit- 
ical life  as  pure  and  poor  as  any  most  retired  mechanic 
lives  and  works  at  his  bench.  And  there  are  merchants 
who  do  carry,  through  all  the  temptations  of  business 
life,  the  same  high  standards,  —  hands  just  as  clean,  and 
hearts  just  as  tender,  as  they  have  when  they  pray  to 
God  or  teach  their  little  children.  And  social  life  is 
lighted  up  with  the  lustre  of  the  white,  unstained  robes 
of  many  a  pure  man  or  woman  who  walks  through  its 
very  midst.  But  the  spots  fall  so  thick  that  it  is  easy  for 
men  to  say,  "  No  one  can  go  there  and  escape  them.  It 
is  hopeless  to  try  to  keep  yourself  unspotted  from  the 
world;"  and  then  (for  that  comes  instantly), "  We  are 
not  to  blame  for  the  world's  spots  upon  us." 

I  said  this  was  the  worst,  but  there  is  one  worse  thing 
still.  When  a  man  comes  not  merely  to  tolerate,  but  to 
boast  of  the  stains  that  the  world  has  flung  upon  him  ; 
when  he  wears  his  spots  as  if  they  were  jewels  ;  when  he 
flaunts  his  unscrupulousness  and  his  cynicism  and  his 
disbelief  and  his  hai'd-heartedness  in  your  face  as  the 
signs  and  badges  of  his  superiority ;  when  to  be  innocent 
and  unsuspicious  and  sensitive  seems  to  be  ridiculous  and 
weak ;  when  it  is  reputable  to  show  that  we  are  men  '>f 


UNSPOTTED  FBOM  THE  WORLD.  179 

the  world  by  exhibiting  the  stains  that  the  world  has  left 
apon  our  reputation,  our  conduct,  and  our  heart,  then  we 
understand  how  flagrant  is  the  danger ;  then  we  see  how 
hard  it  must  be  to  keep  ourselves  unspotted  from  the 
world.  The  world's  stains  do  become  matters  of  pride 
and  choice.  We  compare  ourselves  with  one  another. 
We  decide  what  stains  shall  be  most  honorable.  We  give 
conventional  ranks  and  values  to  the  signs  of  our  own 
disgrace.  It  is  more  respectable  to  have  learnt  heart- 
lessness  from  the  world  than  to  have  learnt  dishonesty ; 
more  honorable  to  have  become  miserly  than  to  have  be- 
come licentious.  As  the  Jews  used  to  establish  a  rank 
and  precedence  between  the  commandments  which  God 
had  given  them,  so  we  decide  which  of  the  laws  of  the 
world,  our  master,  it  is  good  to  keep,  and  which  others  it 
is  good  to  break. 

And  now,  in  view  of  all  this,  we  come  to  our  religion. 
We  hear  St.  James,  as  ti*ue  to-day  as  when  he  wrote  to 
those  first  Christians.  In  his  unsparing  words  he  tells  us 
what  Christianity  has  to  say  to  all  this  state  of  things. 
'  Pure  Religion  and  undefiled  before  God  and  the  Father 
is  this,  To  visit  the  fatherless  and  widows  in  their  afflic- 
tion, and  to  keep  himself  unspotted  from  the  world."  See 
how  intolerant  Religion  is.  She  starts  with  what  man 
have  declared  to  be  impossible.  She  refuses  to  bring  down 
her  standards.  She  insists  that  men  must  come  up  to  her. 
No  man  is  thoroughly  religious,  she  declares,  unless  he 
does  this,  which  it  seems  so  hard  to  do,  unless  he  goes 
through  this  world  untainted,  as  the  sunbeam  goes  through 
the  mist.  Religion  refuses  to  be  degraded  into  a  mere 
means  for  fulfilling  the  purposes  of  man's  selfishness. 
She   proclaims   absolute   standards,  and  will   not   lower 


180  UNSPOTTED   FROM   THE  WORLD. 

them.  She  will  not  say  to  any  man,  weak  and  oom« 
promising  with  the  world,  "  Well,  your  case  is  a  hard 
one,  and  for  you  I  waive  a  part  of  my  demands.  For  you 
religion  shall  mean  not  to  do  this  sin  or  that  sin.  These 
other  sins,  in  consideration  of  your  feebleness  and  temp- 
tations, I  give  you  leave  to  do."  Before  every  man,  in 
the  very  thickest  of  the  world's  contagions,  she  stands  and 
says  with  her  unwavering  voice,  "  Come  out.  Be  sepa- 
rate.    Keep  yourself  unspotted  from  the  world." 

There  is  something  sublime  in  this  unsparingness.  It 
almost  proves  that  our  religion  is  divine,  when  it  under- 
takes for  man  so  divine  a  task.  It  could  not  sustain  itself 
in  its  great  claim  to  be  from  God  unless  it  took  this  high 
and  godlike  ground,  that  whoever  named  the  name  of 
Christ  must  depart  from  all  iniquity.  My  dear  friends, 
our  religion  is  not  true  unless  it  have  this  power  in  it. 
Unless  the  statesman  taking  it  to  Congress,  the  mer- 
chant taking  it  into  business,  the  man  or  woman  carry- 
ing it  with  them  where  they  go  in  all  their  ordinary 
occupations  and  amusements,  do  indeed  find  it  the  power 
of  purity  and  strength.  We  must  bring  our  faith  to  this 
test.  Unless  our  Christianity  does  this  for  us,  it  is  not 
the  true  religion  that  St.  James  talked  of,  and  that  the 
Lord  Jesus  came  to  reveal  and  to  bestow. 

Let  us  be  sure  of  this.  We  go  for  our  assurance  to  the 
first  assertion  of  the  real  character  of  Christianity  in  the 
life  of  Jesus.  It  is  terrible  to  see  with  how  much  qualifica- 
tion and  misconception  the  plain  fi-st  fact  of  Christianity 
has  been  weakened  and  covered  up  —  the  clear  nrst  fact 
that  the  life  of  Jesus  Christ  was  meant  to  be  the  pattern 
of  the  lives  of  all  of  those  who  called  themselves  His  fol 
lowers.     Even  our  devout  reverence  of  His  divinity  has 


UNSPOTTED  FROM  THE  WORLD.  181 

often  been  allowed  to  hide  the  certainty  that  that  life  of 
the  Gospels  was  a  real  human  life,  capable  of  being  pat- 
tern and  inspiration  to  these  human  lives  of  ours.  The 
very  sinlessness  of  Jesus  has  made  Him  seem  to  many  not 
\o  be  man,  instead  of  standing  as  it  was  meant  to  stand, 
{he  type  of  what  all  manhood  had  been  made  at  first,  and 
of  what  all  men  must  come  to  be.  But  the  very  principle 
of  the  Incarnation,  that  without  which  it  loses  all  its 
value,  surely  is  this,  that  Christ  was  Himself  the  first 
Christian  ;  that  in  Him  was  first  displayed  the  power  of 
that  grace  by  which  all  who  believed  in  Him  were  after- 
wards to  be  helped  and  saved.  And  so  the  life  of  Jesus 
was  Hved  in  the  closest  contact  with  His  fellow-men. 
The  strange  temptation  in  the  desert  was  only  the  typal 
scene  of  all  His  life.  He  was  always  "  seeing  the  king- 
doms of  the  world,  and  all  the  glory  of  them,"  so  realiz- 
ing the  highest  temptations  to  which  our  nature  is  open ; 
always  "  feeling  an  hungered,"  so  entering  into  the  lowest 
enticements  that  tell  upon  our  human  flesh.  If  He  had 
soared  like  an  angel  over  this  troubled  city  of  humanity, 
up  above  its  smoke  and  dust,  and  then  had  stood  with 
white  garments  on  the  hills  beyond,  Hit  purity  would 
have  been  only  a  mockery,  and  His  Incarnation  would 
not  have  been  spiritually  real ;  but  if  He  walked  through 
the  same  muddy  streets  of  sordid  care  and  penetrated  the 
Bame  murky  atmosphere  of  passion  that  we  have  to  go 
through,  and  thence  came  out  pure  and  unspotted  from 
the  world,  then  He  is  really  God  manifest  in  the  flesh. 
You  say  His  victory  was  too  easy  to  be  a  type  of  ours. 
But  how  do  you  know  ?  Can  you  read  the  story  of  the 
temptation,  and  give  any  reality  to  it,  without  feehng 
that  there  may  have  been  ttere  a  struggle  as  far  beyond 


182  UNSPOTTED  FROM   THE  WORLD. 

any  of  ours  iu  its  intensity  as  the  triumph  outwent  any  of 
ours  iu  its  perfectness.  But  make  it  as  divinely  easy  as 
you  will,  still  that  very  ease  ia  set  before  us  as  the  thing 
we  are  to  attain  to,  without  which  we  are  not  to  be  sat 
isfied.  Christ  is  tolerant  of  any  feebleness  and  slowness 
but  not  of  any  abandonment  of  the  desire  and  design. 
No  prospect  short  of  this  must  bound  our  view.  As  He 
came  forth  spotless,  so  by  His  power  we  must  come  out 
Unstained  at  last,  and  "  walk  with  Him  in  white." 

Filling  ourselves  with  this  idea,  then,  that  the  spotless- 
ness  of  the  Saviour's  life  is  the  pattern  of  the  spotless 
life  to  which  we  must  aspire,  —  if  we  begin  to  study  it, 
I  think  the  first  thing  that  strikes  us  about  it  is  its  posi- 
tiveness.  I  feel,  at  once,  as  I  read  the  story  of  Jesus,  that 
he  was  not  continually  on  the  defensive.  He  was  not 
continually  standing  guard  over  his  own  purity,  and  de- 
fending it  from  attack.  There  are  two  ways  of  defending 
a  castle :  one  by  shutting  yourself  up  in  it,  and  guard 
ing  every  loophole ;  the  other  by  making  it  an  open  cen- 
tre of  operations  from  which  all  the  surrounding  country 
may  be  subdued.  Is  not  the  last  the  truest  safety  ? 
Jesus  was  ne .  er  guarding  himself,  but  always  invading 
the  lives  of  others  with  His  holiness.  There  never  was 
such  an  open  life  as  His,  and  yet  the  force  with  which 
His  character  and  love  flowed  out  upon  the  world,  kept 
back,  more  strongly  than  any  granite  wall  of  prudent 
caution  could  have  done,  the  world  from  pressing  in  on 
Him.  His  life  was  like  an  open  stream  that  keeps  the 
sea  from  flowing  up  into  it  by  the  eager  force  with  which 
it  flows  down  into  the  sea.  He  was  so  anxious  that  the 
world  should  be  saved  that  therein  was  His  salvation 
irord  the  world.     He  labored  so  to  make  the  world  pure 


UNSPOTTED   FROM   THE   WORLD.  183 

that  He  never  even  had  to  try  to  be  pure  Himself. 
Health  issued  from  Him  so  to  the  sick  who  touched  Hij 
garments  that  He  was  in  no  danger  of  their  infection 
coming  in  to  Him.  This  was  the  positiveness  of  His  sin 
lessness.  He  did  not  spend  His  life  in  trying  not  to  1-j 
wrong.  He  was  too  full  of  the  earnest  love  and  longing 
to  do  right,  —  to  do  His  Father's  will. 

And  so  we  see,  by  contrast,  how  many  of  our  attempts 
at  purity  fail  by  their  negativeness.  A  man  knows  that 
drink  is  ruining  him,  soul  and  body,  and  he  makes  up 
his  mind  that  he  will  not  drink  again.  How  soon  the 
empty  hour  grows  wearisome,  and  his  feet,  having  no 
other  direction  given  to  them,  and  tired  of  mere  standing 
still,  have  carried  him  back  to  the  old  corner,  and  he  is 
at  the  bar  with  the  full  glass  in  his  hand  again.  I  do 
think  that  we  break  almost  all  our  resolutions  not  to  do 
wrong,  while  we  keep  a  large  proportion  of  our  resolu- 
tions that  we  will  do  what  is  right.  Habit,  which  is  the 
power  by  which  evil  rules  us,  is  only  strong  in  a  vacant 
life.  It  is  the  empty,  swept,  and  garnished  house  to 
jrhich  the  devils  come  back  to  hold  still  higher  revel. 
And  even  if  we  could  resist  the  evil  by  merely  hold- 
ing out  against  it,  still  should  we  not  be  like  castles 
protecting  themselves,  but  conquering  and  enriching  no 
country  around  their  walls  ?  Some  people  seem  to  be 
here  in  the  world  just  on  their  guard  all  the  while,  al- 
ways so  afraid  of  doing  wrong  that  they  never  do  any- 
thing really  right.  They  do  not  add  to  the  world's  moral 
force;  as  the  man,  who,  by  constant  watchfulness  over  his 
own  health,  just  keeps  himself  from  dying,  contributes 
nothing  to  the  world's  vitality.  All  merely  negative 
purity  has  something  of  the  taint  of  the  impurity  that 


184  UNSPOTTED   FROM   THE   WORLD, 

it  resists.  The  effort  not  to  be  frivolous  is  friTolona  it- 
self. The  effort  not  to  be  selfish  is  very  apt  to  be  only 
another  form  of  selfishness. 

This  seems  to  me  to  be  really  what  has  often  been 
meant  when  people  have  drawn  strong  contrasts  between 
morality  and  religion.  Morality  is  apt  to  be  conceived 
as  negative.  Religion  is,  by  its  very  nature,  positive. 
Morality  is  to  religion  what  the  Old  Testament  is  to  the 
New,  what  the  Law  is  to  the  Gospel.  And  so  religion 
is  higher  than  morality,  as  manly  virtue  is  nobler  than 
child-like  innocence.  It  is  a  delusion  and  a  weakness 
for  you,  O  man  of  forty,  to  be  wishing  back  again  your 
boyhood,  before  the  world  had  stained  and  spotted  you. 
Manhood  is  better  than  boyhood,  and  the  true  old  age 
than  the  truest  youth.  Of  course  the  building  was  strong 
and  beautiful  before  the  fire  on  Saturday  morning ;  but  to 
have  stood  through  the  fire,  and  to  give  up  its  treasures, 
unhurt,  out  of  the  safe,  on  Monday  morning,  after  the 
fire,  that  was  the  real  beauty  and  strength.  So  we  are 
sure  at  once,  and  we  learn  it  certainly  from  Christ,  that 
the  true  spotlessness  from  the  world  must  come,  not  neg- 
atively, by  the  garments  being  drawn  back  from  every 
worldly  contact,  but  positively,  by  the  garments  being 
80  essentially,  divinely  pure  that  they  fling  pollution  off, 
as  sunshine,  hurrying  on  its  mission  to  the  world,  flings 
back  the  darkness  that  tries  to  stop  its  way. 

And  what  then  ?  Is  any  such  purity  as  Christ's,  so 
positive,  so  strong,  possible  for  us  ?  As  I  said  a  few 
moments  ago,  if  our  religion  cannot  help  us  to  it,  then 
our  religion  fails  of  its  task.  Now  let  me  try  to  show 
you  what  the  faith  of  Christ  can  do  for  us,  if  we  will 
let  it,  to  make  us  so  strong  that  the  contaminations  o* 


UNSPOTTED   FROM   THE  WCRLD  185 

the  world  cannot  affect  us.  I  am  sure  that  there  are 
BC>me  of  us  who  have  come  here,  conscious  of  stains  and 
wounds  from  the  hard  conflicts  of  the  week,  who  do 
indeed  desire  to  know  how  they  can  be  stronger  and 
jrarer. 

In  the  first  place,  Christianity  is  a  religion  of  the  su* 
pematuial,  and,  to  any  one  who  is  thoroughly  in  its 
power,  it  must  bring  the  presence  of  a  live  supernatu- 
ralisra,  and  make  that  the  atmosphere  of  his  life.  You 
cannot  bring  Christ's  religion  down,  and  make  it  a  thing 
of  this  world.  That  first  truth  of  the  Incarnation  is  the 
controlling  truth  of  the  Christian  faith.  Behind,  before 
all  knowledge  of  why  Christ  came  into  this  world,  what 
He  came  to  do,  there  must  always  be  the  fact  that  He 
did  come,  that  the  wall  between  the  two  worlds  was 
broken,  the  gulf  between  God  and  man  was  bridged, 
and  that  to  the  soul  of  every  mortal  who  saw  Christ 
the  spiritual  world,  with  all  its  higher  standards  and 
impulses,  became  visible  and  powerful.  Other  religions 
you  may  bring  down  to  mere  codes  of  worldly  wisdom. 
Christianity  is  supernatural,  or  it  is  nothing.  The  Incar- 
nation is  its  essential  heart,  by  which  it  lives  and  moves 
and  has  its  being.  And  what  then?  What  the  poor 
creature  needs  who  is  standing  right  in  the  midst  of  the 
world's  defilements,  catching  them  on  every  side,  is  it  not 
just  this  :  the  clear,  sure  certainty  of  another  world,  of 
a  spiritual  world  with  spiritual  purity  for  its  law  ?  It  is 
very  much  as  if  you  went  out  of  the  pure,  sweet,  sensi- 
tive home-life  in  which  you  have  been  bred,  into  the 
lowest,  grossest,  filthiest  pollution  of  the  city.  Suppose 
you  had  to  live  there  a  week,  a  month.  What  would 
c^p  you  pure  from  its  defilement?     Would  it  not  be 


186  UNSPOTTED   FROM   THE   WORLD. 

the  ccnstant  sense,  the  ever-present  vision  of  that  higher 
realm  of  hfe  that  you  had  come  from,  making  your  prea^ 
ent  home  seem  dreadful  to  you  ?  Would  not  the  very 
knowledge  that  such  a  higher  realm  of  life  existed  be 
your  strength  and  protection  ?  Nay,  to  alter  the  illus- 
tration a  little,  would  not  your  presence,  if  you  were 
really  radiant  with  the  purity  of  the  better  life  you  came 
from,  exalt  and  help  some  poor  creature  there  with  the 
knowledge  of  the  existence  and  the  possibility  of  better 
things?  And  that  is  just  the  power  of  the  Incarnation. 
It  opened  the  spiritual,  the  supernatural,  the  eternal.  It 
was  as  if  the  clouds  were  broken  above  this  human  val- 
ley that  we  live  in,  and  men  saw  the  Alps  above  them, 
and  took  courage.  For,  remember,  it  was  a  true  Incar- 
nation. It  was  a  real  bringing  of  God  in  the  flesh.  It 
was  a  real  assertion  of  the  possible  union  of  humanity 
and  divinity ;  and  by  all  its  tender  and  familiar  inci- 
dents, by  the  babyhood  and  home  life,  the  hungeringa 
and  thirstings  of  the  incarnate  Christ,  it  brought  the  di- 
vinity that  it  intended  to  reveal  close  into  the  hearts  and 
houses  of  mankind.  It  made  the  supernatural  possible 
as  a  motive  in  the  smallest  acts  of  men.  I  do  not  be- 
lieve that  there  could  be  a  God  in  heaven  and  men  not 
know  it  by  some  movement  of  their  hearts,  and  fear 
Him  in  their  more  solemn  actions,  in  their  governing  of 
ihe  nations,  and  their  thinking  about  life  and  death ; 
but  what  the  Incarnation  did  was  to  bring  God  so  near 
that  no  slightest  action  could  hide  away  from  Him  ;  that 
every  least  activity  of  life  should  feel  His  presence, 
and  men  should  not  only  lead  their  armies  and  make 
their  laws,  but  rise  up  and  go  to  sleep^  walk  in  the 
street,   play   with   their  children,   work    in    their  shops, 


UNSPOTTED   FROM  THF  WORLD.  18t 

talk  with  their  neighbors,  all  in  ti^e  fear  and  love  of 
the  Lord. 

Make,  then,  this  Incarnation  the  one  pervading  powei 
of  a  man's  life.  Let  his  first  feeling  about  this  world  al- 
ways be,  "  God  has  been  here,  and  so  God  is  here  still," 
and  have  you  not  made  him  strong  to  walk  unpolluted 
and  unscorched  through  the  furnace  of  the  world's  most 
fiery  corruptions  ?  It  is  the  low  system,  the  constitution 
that  is  broken  down  and  depressed  in  tone,  that  takes  the 
contagion.  The  strong,  really  well  man,  walks  by  the 
house  where  disease  is  rioting,  and  his  healthy  vitality 
flings  the  distemper  back.  And  a  deep,  living  sense  of 
God  is  the  true  vitality  of  a  human  soul  which  quenches 
the  poisonous  fires  of  corruption,  as  powerless  to  be  hurt 
by  it  as  the  cold,  calm  sea  is  to  be  set  on  fire  by  the  coals 
that  you  may  cast  burning  into  its  bosom.  Think  of  the 
day  after  Jesus  had  called  John  and  Peter  and  Nathanael 
to  be  his  servants.  They  had  begun  to  hear  his  words 
of  eternal  life.  They  had  become  dimly  conscious  of  so 
much  above  and  beyond.  Do  you  think  it  was  as  hard 
for  them  to  pass  unspotted  by  the  places  of  temptation  in 
Chorazin  and  Capernaum  ?  They  had  tasted  the  powers 
of  the  world  to  come.  And  the  true  way,  the  only  true 
way,  to  make  any  man  who  is  a  slave  to  this  world,  catch- 
ing its  corruption,  free  and  pure,  is  to  make  him  see  an- 
other world,  the  supernatural  world,  the  world  of  spirit- 
ual life  above  him  and  below  him  and  stretching  out 
before  him  into  eternity,  made  visible  by  Christ's  Incar- 
nation. 

2.  But  this  is  not  enough.  No  mere  sense  of  the 
supernatural  ever  saved  a  soul.  Christ  must  come  nearei 
to  the  soul  than  this  before  it  can  really  by  Him  "  escape 


188  UNSPOTTED   FROM   THE   WORLD. 

the  corruption  that  is  in  the  world."  Then  tht  e  comr« 
in  all  the  personal  relation  between  the  soul  and  its 
Saviour.  Now  we  must  mount  to  think  what  was  the 
purpose  of  the  Incarnation.  We  must  get  sight  of  that 
divine  pity  which  saw  us  in  our  sins  and  came  to  rescue 
us.  We  must  understand  how  clear-sighted  the  Creator 
is  to  see  and  feel  the  need  of  every  one  among  his  creat- 
ures. We  must  grasp  the  bewildering  thought  of  a  per- 
sonal love  for  our  single  souls.  And  then  all  must  be 
emphasized  and  condensed  into  the  world's  tragedy.  We 
must  find  the  meaning,  so  unintelligible  to  multitudes,  so 
precious  to  every  soul  that  really  has  laid  hold  of  it,  in 
those  strange  words,  "The  Lord  Jesus  Christ  died  for 
me."  We  must  see  the  Jesus  of  the  cross  on  the  cross. 
And  what  then  ?  Do  you  not  see  ?  Full  of  profoundest 
gratitude  the  soul  looks  round  to  see  what  it  can  give  to 
the  Saviour  in  token  of  its  feeling  of  his  love.  And  it 
can  find  nothing.  It  has  nothing  to  give.  And  hopeless 
of  finding  anything,  it  simply  gives  its^^lf.  It  is  its  own 
no  longer.  It  is  given  away  to  Christ.  It  lives  His  life 
and  not  its  own.  Can  you  imagine  that  becoming  real  to 
a  man  and  not  changing  his  relation  to  the  temptations 
that  beset  him.  He  feels  now  with  Christ's  feelings  and 
corruption  drops  away  from  him  as  it  drops  away  irom 
Christ.  Shame,  love,  hope,  every  good  pai^sion  wakes  in 
the  soul.  It  walks  unharmed,  because  it  walks  in  this 
new  sense  of  consecration.  That  seems  to  me  to  be  the 
perfect  ransom  of  a  soul.  When  I  am  so  thankful  to 
Christ  for  all  He  suffered  in  my  behalf  that  I  give  up 
my  life  to  Him  to  show  Him  how  I  love  Him,  and  h^  my 
dedication  of  myself  to  Him  am  saved  from  tlio  world's 
low  slaveries   and   stains,  —  then,  it   seems   <-i>  me,  my 


UNSPOTTED  FROM  THE  WORLD.  189 

heaven  is  begun,  its  security  and  peace  I  have  already 
entered.  I  am  already  safe  within  its  sheltering  walls, 
and  all  my  happy  restful  life  takes  up  already  its  eter- 
nal psalm.  Alread)  I  have  "  washed  my  robes  and  made 
them  white  in  the  blood  of  the  Lamb." 

These  are  the  profound  ways  in  which  men's  souls  are 
kept  unspotted  from  the  world  by  Christ.  Do  you  not 
gee  how  far  they  go  beyond  the  feeble,  fitful  resolutions 
to  resist  and  to  reform  with  which  we  are  always  cheat- 
ing our  eager  souls?  But  there  is  one  more  principle 
which  seems  to  me  so  important  and  so  true  that  I  must 
take  your  time  to  tell  you  of  it.  When  I  ask  somewhat 
more  minutely  into  the  method  which  Christ  uses  to 
keep  his  servants  free  from  the  world's  corruption,  I  seem 
to  come  to  something  like  this,  which  seems,  like  so  much 
besides  in  the  Gospel,  at  first  surprising,  and  then  sub- 
limely natural  and  reasonable,  that  it  is  by  a  Christ-like 
dedication  to  the  world  that  Christ  really  saves  us  from 
the  world.  Do  you  see  what  I  mean  ?  You  go  to  your 
Lord,  and  say,  "  O  Lord,  this  world  is  tempting  me, 
and  I  fear  its  stains.  How  shall  I  escape  it  ?  Shall  I 
run  away  from  it  ?  "  And  the  answer  comes,  as  unmis- 
takable as  if  a  voice  spoke  out  of  the  opened  sky,  "  No ; 
go  up  close  to  this  world,  and  help  it ;  feel  for  its  wick- 
edness ;  pity  it ;  sacrifice  yourself  for  it ;  so  shall  you  be 
safest  from  its  infection ;  so  shall  you  be  surest  not  to 
sacrifice  yourself  to  it."  They  say  the  doctors  and  the 
nurses  are  least  likely  to  catch  the  epidemic.  If  you 
have  a  friend  who  is  dishonest  or  impure,  the  surest  way 
to  save  yourself  from  him  is  to  try  to  save  him.  More 
pure  and  more  secure  in  purity  than  the  Phai'isee,  man 
or  woman,  who  draws  back  the  spotless  skirts  from  the 


190  ONSPOTTED   FKOM   THE  WORLD. 

reach  of  the  poor  fallen  creature  who  clutches  at  them, 
is  the  pitying  man  or  woman  who  in  the  nearest  broth- 
erhood or  sisterhood  goes  close  to  the  wretched  sinner 
and  takes  him  by  the  hand  to  lift  him.  I  am  not  sur- 
prised to  hear  that  the  man  who  despises  the  sinner  and 
gets  as  far  away  from  him  as  possible  has  become,  after 
all,  the  sharer  of  his  sin.  I  am  surprised  if  the  tender 
sympathizer  who  goes  to  the  poor  slave  of  sin,  and  says, 
"  My  brother,  my  heart  bleeds  for  you  ;  let  me  help 
you,"  —  I  am  surprised  if  he  is  not  armed  by  his  pity 
against  the  contagion  of  the  sin  he  tries  to  help,  and  if 
he  does  not  save  both  his  brother  and  himself  together. 

Is  not  this  one  of  the  most  beautiful  principles  in  all 
the  realm  of  truth  ?  I  open  the  book  of  the  dear  and 
holy  life  again,  and  there  I  see  its  illustration.  What 
was  it  that  saved  Jesus  from  the  infection  of  the  world  ? 
Was  it  not  the  same  divinity  which  made  him  the  Saviour 
of  the  world  ?  Was  He  ever  so  strongly  and  purely  pure 
as  when  he  stood  there  in  the  temple  and  looked  down 
upon  the  wretched  woman  at  His  feet,  and  said,  "  Neither 
do  I  condemn  thee  ?  "  Was  He  ever  so  perfectly  true  to 
His  Father  as  when  He  sat  and  sorrowed  over  apostate 
Jerusalem  ?  It  is  the  ineffable  union  of  Christ  with  the 
sinner  that  most  bears  witness  to  Christ's  sinlessness  , 
and  is  there  not  something  in  your  own  experience  which 
testifies  that  the  Saviour  never  seemed  so  perfectly  above 
you  in  the  assurance  of  His  holiness  as  when  He  was 
the  nearest  to  your  side  in  loving  pity  for  your  sin,  — 
never  so  perfectly  sinless  as  when  He  was  "  made  sin  " 
for  you  ? 

I  am  sure  that  as  we  grow  better  and  better  Christians 
this  will  become  more  and  more  the  source  and  fountaia 


UNSPOTTED   FKOM   THE  WORLD.  liil 

of  our  strength.  We  shall  come  so  close  up  to  all  the 
world's  wickedness  that  it  cannot  strike  us.  We  shau 
be  saved  from  it  by  our  pity  for  it.  We  shall  be  fai 
from  its  contagion  the  closer  that  we  come  to  its  needs. 
We  shall  be  as  pure  as  the  angels  the  more  completely 
we  give  ourselves  up  to  the  ministering  angels'  work. 
This  is  the  true  positiveness  of  the  Christian's  purity  the 
real  safety  of  the  loving  and  laboring  life. 

These,  then,  are  the  powers  for  our  preservation.  I 
cannot  recount  them  without  feeling  anew  how  deep  they 
go.  Is  it  then  true  that  none  of  us  can  keep  himself  un- 
spotted from  the  world  unless  his  life  be  full  of  reverence 
for  God  and  trust  in  Christ  and  tender  pity  for  his  fel- 
low-men ?  What  is  that  but  to  say,  that  "  Except  a  man 
be  born  again  he  cannot  enter  into  the  kingdom  of 
God?"  Oh,  what  poor  makeshifts  all  our  laws  and  de- 
cencies and  proprieties  appear  beside  the  live  power  of 
the  new  manhood  of  grace.  Oh,  how  hard  and  hopeless 
seems  the  prudent,  watchful,  timid  man,  who  is  trying 
to  save  himself  by  constant  self-denials,  beside  the  new 
freeman  of  the  Lord  Jesus  Christ,  full  of  the  high  am- 
bitions and  sure  hopes  of  the  heavenly  life. 

Some  of  the  world's  dangers  change  from  age  to  age. 
Our  own  time  has  its  own  forms  of  danger,  and  it  is  free 
from  some  that  once  beset  our  fathers.  But  so  long  as 
the  world  is  still  the  world,  the  great  mass  of  its  corrupt 
influence  is  still  the  same.  Lust,  falsehood,  cruelty,  in- 
justice, selfishness,  these  are  about  us  as  they  were  about 
Noah  and  Abraham  and  Moses.  But  it  is  possible  to  be 
BO  given  up  to  Christ  and  to  fellow-man  that  they  shall 
not  hurt  us.  It  is  possible  for  us  to  walk  through  the 
6re  and  not  be  burned    but  it  depends  always  and  wholly 


192  UNSPOTTED   FBOM  THE  WORLD. 

upon  whether  He  walks  toere  with  us.  Let  us  not  trust 
ourselves,  for  we  are  weakness.  Let  us  trust  Him,  and 
work  for  all  who  need  us,  for  so  shall  we  go  pure  through 
all  impurity,  and  come  at  last  home,  where  the  children 
shall  be  safe  forever  in  the  Father's  house,  the  sheep 
gathered  forever  into  the  Shepherd's  fold. 


Xi. 

A  GOOD-FRIDAY   SERMON 

■  Tlten  were  there  two  thieves  crucified  with  Hiia.  —  ilATT.  xxtvL  9%. 
"  I  am  crucified  with  Christ."  —  Gal.  ii.  20. 

Whoever  reads  the  story  of  our  Lord's  crucifixion  as 
Vie  have  read  it  here  this  morning  feels  that  a  part  of  its 
humiliation  was  that  He  did  not  suffer  alone.  Crucifix- 
ion was  terrible  and  disgraceful  enough  in  itself,  but  if 
Jesus  had  hung  upon  His  cross  with  nothing  near  him  to 
disturb  the  impression  of  His  calm  serenity  and  inno- 
cence, it  might  well  have  happened  that  the  people  who 
stood  and  watched  would  have  lost  sight  of  the  disgrace, 
and  would  have  felt  the  majesty  of  the  sacrifice.  Already 
that  place  of  suffering  might  have  seemed  as  glorious  aa 
it  has  seemed  to  the  world  since.  An  awe  and  wonder, 
almost  ready  to  break  out  in  thankfulness  and  praise, 
might  have  spread  through  the  multitude  who  watched 
the  spectacle  of  heroism  and  love.  But,  as  it  was,  thej 
went  to  the  prison  and  dragged  out  two  wretched  culprits 
who  were  waiting  for  their  doom.  That  there  might  be 
no  doubt  about  the  disgracefulness  of  the  Saviour's  suffer- 
ings, they  hung  Him  between  two  thieves.  One  on  the 
right  hand  and  the  other  on  the  left,  those  malefactors 
advertised  the  ignominy  of  His  pain.  Their  friends,  the 
thieves  and  roughs  of  Jerusalem,  were  side  by  side  with 
Hia  disciples  in  the  crowd.     The  loathing  of  all  honest 


194  A  GOOD-FRroAY   SERMON. 

men  was  heaped  upon  them,  and  He,  hanging  there  with 
them,  in  the  same  condemnation,  was  covered  with  the 
mantle  of  their  sin.  He  had  come  into  their  lot.  He 
bore  their  curse.  He  took  His  share  in  their  disgrace 
when  He  was  crucified  with  them. 

It  was  not  many  yeaw  afterward  that  the  great  St 
Paul,  whose  life  had  become  wonderful  to  himself  as  he 
saw  under  what  new  motives  and  to  what  new  purpose  it 
was  lived  since  he  became  a  disciple  of  Jesus,  when  he 
tried  to  sum  up  that  life  and  tell  the  beauty  of  its  associ 
ation  with  his  Lord,  used  this  strange  language:  "I  am 
crucified  with  Christ."  His  life  was  full  of  suffering,  and 
suffering  which  had  to  do  with  sin.  He  found  himself 
every  day  "  dying  to  the  world,"  that  is,  separated  by 
self-sacrifice  and  pain  from  the  wicked  things  about 
him.  In  all  that  suffering,  which  was  at  once  the  token 
and  the  means  of  higher  life,  he  felt  himself  drawn  to- 
wards and  taken  into  the  experience  of  his  Master.  As 
he  was  suffering,  so  Jesus  had  suffered.  As  he  by  his 
suffering  was  able  at  once  to  bear  his  testimony  against, 
to  separate  himself  from,  and  also  to  help  the  sinful 
world,  so  Jesus  had  declared,  upon  His  cross,  at  once 
His  holiness  and  His  pity.  Paul  saw  in  his  ministry  of 
self-sacrifice  a  dim,  imperfect,  far-off  echo  of  his  Lord's, 
and  so  he  told  the  story  of  his  new  life  in  the  terms  of 
the  story  of  that  life  into  which  it  had  entered,  and  he 
said,  "  I  am  crucified  with  Christ." 

I  have  brought  these  two  passages  together,  because, 
in  their  union,  they  bring  out  the  complete  truth  on 
which  we  wish  to  dwell  upon  Good-Friday.  The  cross 
before  which  we  stand  to-day  las  both  its  humiliation 
and  its  glory.     It  is  a  tragedy  that  bewilders  and  dia- 


mk 


A   GOOD-FRIDAY    SERMON.  196 

majd  us.  It  is  likewise  a  proclamation  of  peace  and 
hope.  lu  the  degi-adation  of  Christ,  which  compelled 
Him  to  be  crucified  with  the  thieves,  there  is  a  picture 
of  how  very  low  He  stooped  to  our  condition.  In  the 
triumph  of  Paul,  at  his  participation  with  Christ,  we 
see  how  the  believer  is  taken  into  his  Master's  privilege. 
The  two  belong  together.  Christ  was  humiliated  into 
our  condition  that  we  might  be  exalted  unto  His.  Christ 
was  crucified  with  man  that  man  might  rejoice  in  being 
crucified  with  Christ.  Both  the  depth  to  which  He  went 
to  seek  man  and  the  height  up  to  which  He  would  carry 
man,  were  set  forth  in  the  cross.  Alas  for  him  who, 
standing  on  Good-Friday  and  looking  at  the  crucifixion, 
does  not  see  both  of  these,  does  not  learn  at  once  how 
low  his  Saviour  went  to  find  him,  and  how  high  he  may 
go  if  he  will  make  his  Saviour's  life  his  own  !  Let  ua 
look  at  both  the  scenes.  Let  us  try  to  understand  both 
thoughts,  —  Christ's  crucifixion  with  man,  and  man's  cru- 
cifixion with  Christ,  —  and  bind  them  both  together  in 
one  humbling  and  inspiring  truth. 

Turn,  then,  first,  to  the  cross  upon  Calvary,  and  let  ua 
think  about  Christ's  crucifixion  with  man.  In  the  prison 
at  Jerusalem  there  are  two  robbers  lying,  waiting  for 
their  death.  It  is  sure  to  come.  Their  crimes  have 
doomed  them  to  it.  As  they  look  back  over  their 
miserable  lives  they  can  see  how  from  their  boyhood, 
when  their  vice  began,  they  have  been  steadily  and  cer- 
tainly moving  on  towards  this  destiny.  Their  sin  has 
deepened,  and,  with  their  deepening  sin,  the  darkness  of 
the  coming  death  has  gathered  round  them.  They  have 
known  whither  they  were  going.  They  have  known  that 
8ome  time  or  other  a  life  likr.  theirs  must  bring  a  violent 


196  A  GOOD-FRroAT   SERMON. 

death.  There  is  no  record  of  their  names,  or  anything 
about  them.  We  do  not  separate  or  individualize  them. 
To  us,  as  they  sit  there  in  prison,  they  are  simply  wicked 
men  waiting  for  the  death  which  their  wickedness  has 
brought  upon  them.  And  now,  at  last,  the  time  haf 
come.  The  last  morning  dawns  upon  them.  Sin  is  fin 
ished,  and,  on  this  solemn  Good-Friday,  it  brings  forth 
death.  The  soldiers  are  at  the  door,  and  the  crosses  are 
waiting.  You  see  how  general,  how  typical,  how  little 
/jersonal  it  all  is.  It  is  not  these  two  men  come  to  the 
ruin  which  their  special  sin  deserves.  It  is  wickedness, 
which,  by  the  terrible  necessity  of  its  nature,  has  brought 
forth  death.  And  now  with  the  black  record  of  this 
y/ wickedness  in  your  minds,  think  of  another  life  which 
comes  to  its  crisis  on  this  same  Good-Friday.  There 
has  been  a  man  living  in  Palestine  here  for  thirty  years, 
and  He  has  never  done  a  sin.  Nay,  more  than  that,  He 
has  amazed  the  eyes  of  men  with  a  positive  holiness, 
a  picture  of  what  it  is  to  be  absolutely  good,  such  as  they 
never  dreamed  of.  This  spotless,  strong,  pure  goodness 
has  all  been  poured  out  in  love.  The  life  has  been  all 
self-sacrifice.  He  has  never  seemed  to  think  of  Him- 
self. Health  and  truth  have  gone  out  from  Him  to  who- 
ever touched  Him.  A  life  like  the  shining  of  the  sun  1 
A  life  of  which,  as  men  looked  at  it,  they  have  felt  that 
in  it  their  best  dreams  of  humanity  were  surpassed,  — 
that  in  it  there  was  something  more  than  human.  Last 
night  Jesus  of  Nazareth  had  sat  with  his  disciples,  and 
talked  with  them  in  words  of  spiritual  wisdom  which 
have  ever  since  been  the  wonder  of  the  world.  They  had 
gone  out  then,  together,  to  the  Garden  of  Gethsemane 
There  Jesus  had  plead  with  God,  in  agony,  while  His  dis' 


A  GOOD-FRIDAY    'ERMON.  197 

siples  slept  with  weariness  and  3orrow.  By  and  by  tha 
soldiers  came  and  took  Jesus,  and  carried  Him  away  to 
the  High  Priest.  After  that  He  was  wholly  separated 
from  His  friends,  —  from  eveiybody  that  believed  in  Him 
arid  loved  Him.  From  the  High  Priest's  house,  where 
He  is  insulted  ard  taunted.  He  is  sent  early  on  this  Fri- 
day moi'ning  to  the  Governor's.  There  He  is  confronted 
with  the  cold,  brutal  unbelief  of  the  Roman  magistrate. 
He  is  sent  to  Herod,  and  back  again  to  Pilate,  walking 
the  familiar  streets  in  disgrace  and  desertion.  Then  He 
is  scourged.  Then  the  people  demand  His  blood.  At 
last  the  Governor  yields  to  them,  and,  with  the  sentence 
of  a  criminal,  He  is  led  away,  and  his  procession  meets 
the  procession  in  which  the  two  thieves  are  led  to  death, 
and  they  are  crucified  together. 

There,  then,  are  the  two  stories.  See  how  far  apart 
they  begin.  One  in  the  innocence  of  perfect  holiness ; 
the  other  in  the  blackest  wickedness.  And  then  see  how 
they  meet  at  last.  As  when  a  black  and  turbid  stream 
goes  hurrying  towards  a  cavern's  gloom,  into  which  it  is 
destined  to  plunge  itself  out  of  sight,  and  just  before  it 
reaches  its  dark  doom,  a  pure,  fresh  river  that  was  born 
among  the  snows  in  the  sunlight  on  the  mountain's  top, 
and  has  sung  its  way  down  through  flowers,  drops  its 
quiet,  transparent  waters  into  the  tumultuous  current, 
and  shares  its  plunge,  —  so  the  pure  holiness  of  Christ 
fell  into  the  stream  of  human  wickedness,  and  shared  its 
fate.  The  Saviour's  life  entered  it  io  the  life  of  human- 
ity at  its  blackest.  He  had  left  behind  heaven  ;  He  had 
left  behind  even  the  little  heavenliness  which  he  had 
found  upon  the  earth.  All  the  disciples  had  forsaken 
^im,  and  fled.     The  little  flicker  of  sympathy  which  He 


198  A  GOOD-FRIDAY   SERMON. 

had  seen  upon  the  face  of  Pilate,  He  had  lost  now.  He 
had  come  to  the  company  of  robbers.  There  were  twc 
thieves  crucified  with  Him. 

That  is  the  sight  which  we  behold  as  we  look  at  thea« 
three  crosses  standing  out  sharp  and  terrible  against  the 
sky.  Into  the  darkest  of  earth's  darkness,  into  the  deep- 
est  consequences  of  sin  where  it  was  possible  for  in- 
nocence to  go,  the  Incarnate  One  has  gone.  Our  Im~ 
manuel,  our  God  with  us,  is  with  the  worst  of  us  in 
his  most  awful  misery.  No  child  of  God  shall  know 
any  suffering  which  this  love  shall  not  fathom  to  its 
depths  with  Him.  No  pain,  except  the  purely  per- 
sonal pain  of  remorse,  which  it  is  eternally  impossible 
that  innocence  should  feel,  no  pain  but  that,  shall  there 
be  anywhere  upon  the  earth,  of  which  any  agonized  soul 
shall  be  able  to  cry  out  to  bis  Saviour  and  say,  "  Do  not 
mock  me  with  your  pity.  You  do  not  know  what  my 
pain  is."  And  even  something  as  like  remorse  as  is  that 
profound  contrition  which  comes  to  a  brother  when  his 
brother  sins,  or  to  a  father  when  a  child  is  lost,  even 
the  woe  which  comes  of  such  identification  with  the  sin- 
ner as  leaves  out  nothing  save  his  sin,  share,  even  that 
last  pain  of  life,  which  only  they  who  have  something 
divine  in  them  can  feel,  even  that  the  Divine  One  en- 
dared,  and  set  forth  before  us  in  his  crucifixion  between 
the  robbers. 

Once  in  the  hours  while  he  hung  there,  a  cry  of  desola- 
tion, abandonment,  and  disgrace,  burst  from  the  sufferer's 
lips.  "  My  God  I  My  God !  why  hast  thou  forsaken  me  ?  " 
He  cries,  making  His  own  the  words  of  an  old  psalm  of 
woe.  When  I  read  what  men  have  written  to  explain 
the  meaning  of  Jesus  in  that  cry,  I  always  feel  ane  iv  how 


A   GOOD- FRIDAY   SERMON.  199 

mnch  deeper  than  our  comprehension  went  his  identifi- 
carton  with  humanity  when  He  plunged  into  the  darkness 
of  its  sin.     "  He  was  made  flesh  !  "     Into  what  mysteri- 
ous contact  with  the  sinfulness  to  which  the  flesh  of  man 
had  given  itself  that  being  made  flesh  brought  him,  I 
know  no  man  has  ever  fathomed.    If  I  try  to  fathom  it  at 
all,  I  can  only  picture  to  myself  the  most  Christlike  act, 
the  most  Messianic  entrance  into  the  strange  and  dread 
ful  fate  of  other  men  which  my  imagination  can  conceive. 
Let  me  suppose  that  the  purest  woman  in  this  town,  the 
most  sensitive  and  scrupulous,  moved  by  a  sense  of  sister- 
hood and  by  a  longing  pity,  gathers  up  all  her  life  and 
goes  and  lives  among  the  lowest  and  most  brutal  and 
most  foul  savages  that  this  earth  contains.    As  she  enters 
their  land  she  leaves  her  own  life  behind.     She  accepts 
their   life.      Everything,    except    their   wickedness,    she 
makes  her  own.     She  sacrifices  her  fastidiousness  every 
day.     She  finds  herself  the  victim  of  habits  which  are 
the  consequences  of  long  years  of  sin.     No  sensibility 
that  is  not  shocked,  no  fine  and  pure  taste  that  is  not 
wounded.     Her  common  human  nature  with  these  sav- 
ages asserts  itself  to  her  every  day.     But  the  very  depth 
of  the  union  into  which  she  comes  with  them  by  her  pity 
makes  her  all  the  more  sensitive  to  the  horror  of  thoir 
life.     Their  sin  is  awful  to  her,  not  only  because  of  her 
own  purity,  but  because  of  the  keen  understanding  of  its 
awfulness,  which  comes  from  her  profound  oneness  of 
nature  with   these  sinners.     She  cannot  stand  ofE   and 
look  at  them  and  work  for  them  from  a  safe  distance. 
She  is  one  of  them  in  their  common  humanity.     In  every 
foul  wickedness  of  theirs  she  suffers.     She  bears  their 
sins  a  heavy  burden  on  her  heart.     Is  it  strange  that  she 


200  A  GOOD-FRIDAY  SERMON. 

comes  by  and  by  to  feel  the  wretchedness  and  woe  of  that 
island  taking  complete  possession  of  her  ?  Is  it  strange 
that,  —  though  she  knows  that  the  sweet  home  across  the 
sea,  which  she  has  left,  is  just  as  sweet  as  ever,  and  that 
her  friends  there  are  loving  her,  and  have  not  forgotten 
her  a  moment,  —  the  awful  load  she  carries,  the  frightful 
atmosphere  of  vice  that  reeks  around  her,  should  seem 
sometimes  to  shut  her  in  to  desolation  and  shut  her  out 
from  every  higher  life  and  all  pure  love,  so  that  when  rhis 
mood  is  darkest  she  should  stand  some  day  upon  the 
beach,  and,  without  any  faithlessness  to  her  task,  or  any 
distrust  of  the  friends  at  home,  cry  out  across  the  sea  to 
them,  "Oh,  why  have  you  forsaken  me?"  Do  not  imag- 
ine that  I  think  that  any  human  sacrifice  can  truly  image 
His  surrender,  or  any  human  pain  declare  the  measure  of 
His  woe.  But  this  is  surely  the  best  that  earth  can  show 
us  of  the  kind  of  agony  with  which  the  Christ  who,  in 
His  love,  had  gone  down  to  the  deepest  and  most  terrible 
depths  of  humanity,  even  to  being  crucified  between  two 
thieves,  seemed  for  a  moment  to  have  lost  himself,  and 
cried  out  to  the  Father,  with  whom  He  was  eternally  and 
inseparably  one,  "  Oh,  why  hast  Thou  forsaken  Me  ?  "  If 
the  cry  bewilders  as  we  try  to  comprehend  the  deity  to 
which  it  appeals,  it  may  at  least  reveal  to  us  something 
of  the  depth  out  of  which  it  ascends. 

Such  then  is  the  story  of  Christ's  crucifixion  in  and 
with  and  for  humanity.  It  is  no  fantastic  conception  of 
the  imputation  to  Him  of  a  sinfulness  which  was  not  Ilia, 
of  God's  counting  Him  guilty  of  wickedness  which  He 
had  never  done.  It  is  something  infinitely,  awfully  more 
real  than  that.  It  is  that  the  God  who  made  maa  in  His 
own  image,  coming  to  the  life  of  man,  found  that  image 


A  GOOD-FBIDAT  SERMON.  201 

all  broken  and  lost.  He  came  into  men's  life  and  found 
them  dying  for  their  sin.  He  was  guiltloss  of  their  sin, 
but  He  entered  with  consummate  intensity  of  suffering 
into  their  death,  as  the  pure  soul  which  I  pictured  in  that 
foul  savage  island  must  feel  the  horror  of  the  misery 
which  vice  has  brought  there  more  than  its  inhabitants, 
just  in  proportion  as  it  was  free  from  the  vice  with  which 
they  are  polluted.  It  was  a  sin  not  His  own  which  He 
bore  upon  the  cross.  Think,  if  you  can,  how  an  incar- 
nation in  a  world  wholly  free  from  sin  would  have  closed, 
and  the  Incarnate  One  gone  up  to  His  eternal  glory,  and 
then  you  have  some  conception  of  what  sin  has  done  in 
this  world.  Can  we  see  God  come  among  a  race  that  does 
not  know  what  sin  is,  and,  having  shared  its  life,  at  last 
stand  ready  to  withdraw  His  presence  from  their  sight? 
Think  of  the  scene  of  gratitude  and  love.  Can  we  not 
see  the  joyous  thankful  company  of  mortals,  as  with  tri- 
umphant songs  of  praise  they  bring  their  Lord  and  friend 
up  to  the  noblest  height  of  earth,  and  with  hearts  full  of 
trust  that  He  could  never  leave  them  wholly,  see  His 
form  depart  out  of  their  view  ?  How  different  it  all  is 
now  I  Instead  of  this  scene,  there  is  the  cross  on  Cal- 
vary I  Instead  of  God  with  His  noblest  creatures  among 
the  noblest  scenes  of  earth,  in  sympathy  of  common  holi- 
ness, here  is  the  Son  of  God  beside  the  vilest  of  mankind 
upon  the  cross  of  shame.  Ah,  my  dear  friends,  there  is 
the  terrible  consummate  testimony  of  what  sin  is.  We 
trace  its  power  everywhere  else.  We  see  its  woe.  We 
learn  to  hate  it,  but  we  come  to  the  profoundest  knowl- 
edge and  the  profoundest  hatred  of  it  when  we  come  to 
this,  that  it  crucified  the  Son  of  God  with  wicked  men,  it 
made  Jesus  tho  sharer  of  our  human  woe.     Sin  did  this. 


^ 


202  A  GOOD-FRIDAY   SEBMON, 

Whose  sin?  What  sin?  Then  it  is  that  the  terrible 
identity  of  sin  comes  out.  Here  in  the  presence  of  God'a 
sufifering  and  dying  Son  the  oneness  of  God's  family  is 
clear.  All  that  we  have  ever  done  that  has  helped  to 
make  the  world  a  different  place  from  that  holy  ground 
on  which  the  Holy  God  might  have  walked  in  perfect 
sympathy  with  His  obedient  children,  all  our  wilfulness, 
all  our  disobedience,  all  our  untruth,  all  our  passion,  all 
our  lust,  all  our  selfishness,  all  our  wickednesses  which 
we  call  little  wickednesses  at  home  or  in  the  street,  they 
all  take  their  place  in,  they  all  declare  their  oneness  with, 
that  sin  which  brought  Christ  to  the  cross.  It  is  our 
punishment  that  He  shares.  It  is  our  woe  down  into 
which  His  love  has  brought  Him.  We  hang  upon  our 
cross  and  He  hangs  on  His  beside  us.  For  our  cross  we 
can  blame  none  but  ourselves.  Our  sin  has  brought  us 
what  we  suffer,  but  His  cross  no  sin  of  His  has  built.  It 
is  the  wickedness  in  which  we  have  so  deep  a  part,  which 
decrees  that  it  shall  be  a  cross  and  not  a  throne.  There 
comes,  as  the  result  of  all,  just  exactly  what  is  expressed 
in  the  strange  deep  words  of  the  penitent  thief  to  his 
mocking  comrade,  —  words  which  the  soul  may  turn  and 
address  to  itself,  invoking  from  itself  a  solemn  repentance 
and  hate  of  sin  as  it  sees  its  Saviour  a  sharer  in  the  suf- 
fering which  its  sin  brings  :  "  Dost  not  thou  fear  God, 
seeing  thou  art  in  the  same  condemnation  ?  And  we  in- 
deed justly,  for  we  receive  the  due  reward  of  our  deeds; 
but  this  man  hath  done  nothing  amiss." 

But  it  is  time  now  that  we  should  turn  to  the  other 
aspect  of  the  cross.  I  have  tried  to  depict  the  mean- 
ing of  Christ  crucified  with  man,  the  Son  of  God  enter- 
ing into  the  shame  and  pain  of  human  sin.     Now  hear 


A   GOOD-FRIDAY  SERMON.  203 

St.  Paul.  A  few  short  years  have  passed  away.  The 
cnicifixiou  of  Jesus  has  been  illuminated  by  the  resurrec- 
tion, the  ascension,  and  the  Pentecost.  It  has  become 
already,  in  the  minds  of  hundreds  of  men  and  women,  a 
dear  and  glorious  event.  Behind  its  shame  and  pain  it 
has  opened  a  heart  of  love  and  glory,  and  St.  Paul,  sum- 
ming up  his  life  in  its  best  privileges  and  holiest  pur- 
poses, says,  "  I  am  crucified  with  Christ."  You  see  how 
great  the  difference  is.  Before,  when  Christ  was  cruci- 
fied with  the  two  thieves,  it  was  the  Son  of  God  brought 
down  into  the  misery  and  shame  of  man.  Now,  when 
Paul  is  crucified  with  Jesus,  it  is  a  man  brought  up  into 
the  glory  of  the  Son  of  God.  Evidently  there  must  be 
another  side,  a  side  of  privilege  and  delight,  to  this  great 
tragedy,  or  else  we  should  not  hear  a  man  cry  with  a 
tone  of  exultation,  such  as  this,  "  Lo,  I  am  crucified 
with  Christ."  And  it  is  something  which,  strange  as  it 
would  have  seemed  to  any  one  who  stood  before  the 
cross  on  Good-Friday,  has  grown  most  familiar  to  the 
Christian  since.  What  does  it  mean  ?  Is  it  not  this : 
that  as  Christ,  by  his  self-sacrifice,  entered  into  the  com- 
pany of  man,  so  there  is  a  self -surrender  by  which  man 
enters  into  the  company  of  Christ.  He  came  down  to 
us,  and  tasted  on  our  cross  the  misery  of  sin.  We  may 
go  up  to  His  cross,  and  taste,  with  Him,  the  glory  and 
peace  of  perfect  t;bedience  and  communion  with  God. 

For  even  the  dullest,  as  he  stands  before  the  crucifix- 
ion, gets  some  dim  impression  that  there  are  two  differ- 
ent elements  there,  —  one  dreadful,  and  one  beautiful. 
There  is  what  Christ  is  made  for  us,  the  victim,  torn  and 
tortured  and  distressed,  and  there  is  what  Christ  is  in 
Himself,  and  what  he  wants  to  make  us,-  -the  loving, 


204  A  GOOD-FRIDAY   SERMON. 

peaceful  son  of  God.  Christ  surrendered  Himself  and 
became  the  first.  We,  if  we  can  surrender  ourselves, 
may  become  the  second,  and  share  the  glory  of  His  cru- 
cifixion. It  is  a  strange  thought  to  many,  but  it  is  a 
thought  that  grows  veiy  dear  to  the  souls  that  really 
enter  into  it,  that  there  was  something  in  the  crucifixion 
which  it  is  our  highest  privilege  if  we  can  share.  Hang 
(ng  there  in  mocker^'-  and  pain,  there  was  still  something 
in  the  heart  of  Jesus  which  made  it  the  richest  heart  in 
aL  the  world ;  something  which,  if  by  any  crucifixion 
we  can  gather  into  our  hearts,  we  shall  be  rich  indeed. 
See  what  it  was.  First,  the  truth  of  the  cross  must  have 
been  divinely  and  completely  present  with  him.  That 
truth  was  the  love  of  God.  All  the  memory  of  the  past, 
all  the  way  in  which,  from  the  beginning  of  sin,  mercy 
had  been  making  ready  to  meet  the  sin,  all  the  develop- 
ment, age  after  age,  of  the  design  of  pity,  which  at  last 
had  come  here  to  its  consummation,  —  all  this  must  have 
filled  the  soul  of  Jesus,  and,  in  the  midst  of  His  pain, 
comforted  and  strengthened  Him.  It  is  not  for  us  to 
speak  of  what  the  mystery  of  Incarnation  means,  but  we 
oannot  help  believing  that  there  came  to  Christ,  then, 
such  knowledge  of  the  Godhood  in  which  He  belonged 
as  could  come  only  to  that  one  point  in  the  moral  uni- 
verse where  the  Eternal  Holiness  was  suffering  for  hu- 
man sin.  The  truth  of  the  cross,  the  truth  of  the  love 
of  God,  inexhaustible  and  tireless,  was  with  Him  in  His 
Bufferings. 

And  beside  the  truth  of  the  cross  there  must  have 
been  the  consciousness  of  the  cross,  a  clear  and  satisfying 
knowledge  of  his  own  present  position,  the  conscious- 
ness  of   obedience.     He  was   doing  His    Fatltier's   will. 


A  GOOD-FtlDAY  SERMON.  205 

Behiud  every  pain,  behind  every  shame,  that  certainty 
must  have  rested  as  an  abiding  strength.  We  must 
know  more  of  che  soul  of  Jesus  than  we  do,  before  we 
can  understand  what  strength  came  to  Him  from  that 
consciousness.  "  My  meat  is  to  do  the  will  of  Him  tnat 
sent  Me,  and  to  finish  His  work,"  He  had  said  when  He 
was  preaching  and  working  miracles ;  but  now,  when  the 
will  had  culminated  in  this  sufiFering,  and  He  was  dying 
because  He  must  obey,  there  must  have  been  a  strength 
and  nourishment  in  the  conscious  obedience  that  over- 
whelmed and  sank  the  weakness  of  the  flesh. 

And  besides  these  there  must  have  been  the  vision  of 
the  cross.  It  is  impossible  that  the  Redeemer,  dying 
for  mankind,  should  not  have  seen  the  redeemed  world 
stretching  out  before  Him.  "If  I  be  lifted  up,"  he  had 
said  "  I  shall  draw  all  men  unto  me."  When  He  was 
lifted  up  He  must  have  seen  them  gathering.  All  the 
far  ends  of  the  earth,  all  the  far  ends  of  history,  all  the 
new  depths  of  experience  that  should  be  stirred,  —  these 
must  have  lain  open  before  Him.  There  must  have 
flowed  strength  in  upon  Him  from  that  vision.  It  was 
worth  while,  indeed,  with  such  result  before  it.  No  pang 
was  too  great  to  be  borne,  when  by  the  suffering  of  each 
new  pang  his  soul  climbed  to  the  height  of  yet  a  little 
wider  vision.  Only  He  who  sees  to  the  end,  and  knows 
how  wide  and  how  deep  the  power  of  redemption  is  to 
go,  can  tell  how  the  vision  from  the  cross  upheld  and 
strengthened  the  soul  of  the  Redeemer. 

The  truth  of  the  cross,  the  consciousness  of  the  cross,  ' 
the  vision  of  the  cross ;  the  Father  s  love.  His  own  obe- 
dience, the  world's  redemption,  —  these  were  in  the  soul 
of  the  Saviour,  sustaining  it,  feeding  it,  while  he  wig 


206  A    JOOD-FRIDAT   SERMON. 

dying.  These  made  the  glorious  side  of  the  crucifixioa. 
And  yet  thoy  were  a  part  of  the  crucifixion.  They  wera 
not  something  wholly  foreign,  like  the  wine  and  myrrh 
given  to  the  sufferer  to  sustain  Him.  He  reached  them 
by,  He  found  them  in,  His  suffering.  His  death,  and  all 
that  went  with  it,  the  sacrifice  of  ease  and  favor  and 
delight,  they  brought  to  Him  the  assurance  of  love,  the 
joy  of  obedience,  the  promise  of  redemption  —  the  truth, 
the  consciousness,  and  the  vision  of  the  cross.  Can  you 
not  see,  then,  what  a  light  pours  into  St.  Paul's  words, 
"  I  am  crucified  with  Christ "  ?  It  is  no  cry  of  pain, 
though  the  fact  of  pain  is  in  it.  It  is  not  a  shout  of 
triumph.  It  is  too  full  of  pain  for  that.  But  it  is 
a  deep  and  satisfied  assurance  that  through  the  pain, 
through  distress  and  death  to  much  which  he  had  loved, 
he  has  found  what  his  Saviour  found  upon  His  cross, 
—  the  love  of  God,  the  consciousness  of  obedience,  the 
vision  of  a  world  redeemed.  He  had  suffered  for  Christ, 
but  by  his  suffering  for  Christ  he  had,  giving  up  his  own 
joy  which  was  earthly  and  selfish,  entered  into  Christ's 
joy  which  is  heavenly  and  full  of  love.  "  I  am  crucified 
with  Christ,  nevertheless  I  live ;  yet  not  I,  but  Christ 
liveth  in  me."  He  had  left  his  own  life  at  the  foot  of 
the  cross.  He  had  climbed  up  to  his  dying  Lord,  and 
shared  His  death  unto  sin ;  but  in  sharing  that,  he  had 
shared  also  the  new  life  unto  holiness,  and  entered  into 
the  truth  of  love,  the  consciousness  of  obedience,  and  the 
vision  of  the  world  redeemed.  That  was  what  Good- 
Friday  meant  to  St.  Paul. 

And  is  it  possible  that  Good-Friday  should  mean  ah 
that  to  us  ?  Indeed  it  ia.  1  hope  that  it  does  mean  al] 
tluU  to  many  and  many  a  one  of  you  who  have  joiue*^ 


A  GOOD-FRIDAY   SERMON.  207 

in  this  morning's  solemn  worsiiip.  May  I  not  hope  that 
even  in  this  morning's  worship  the  deep  meaning  has  for 
the  first  time  opened  its  light  to  some  of  you  ?  You  are 
crucified  with  Christ.  What  shall  that  mean?  That 
you  share  His  pain  ?  Oh  yes  !  —  all  the  separation  from 
sin,  all  the  self-sacrifice  by  which  alone  you  could  pre- 
serve your  own  purity  and  help  your  brethren,  has  been 
in  you  the  renewal,  the  echo,  of  that  terrible  giving  of 
Himself  for  truth  and  man  which  Christ  accomplished. 
But  if,  as  you  have  sacrificed  yourself  in  any  way,  there 
has  come  into  you  the  rich  divine  assurance  of  God's  love, 
the  d(!ep  and  peaceful  joy  in  obeying  God,  and  far  bright 
hopes  for  your  humanity,  broken  but  glorious  prospects 
of  what  an  obedience,  perfect  where  yours  is  stumbling, 
complete  where  yours  is  partial,  shall  some  day  make 
this  world  to  be ;  if  all  this  has  come  to  you  upon  your 
cross,  as  it  came  to  the  Lord  on  His,  then  the  glory  aa 
well  as  the  grief  of  the  crucifixion  is  renewed  in  you,  and 
the  satisfaction  as  well  as  the  pain  of  your  new  life  ia 
uttered  when  you  say,  in  soft  and  solemn  words,  "  I,  too, 
am  crucified  with  Christ." 

I  see  a  man  setting  himself  against  temptation,  con- 
quering his  sins,  giving  up  the  world  for  his  Lord.  It  ia 
a  struggle  full  of  pain.  His  hea*t  and  flesh  fail  him. 
How  can  he  bear  what  breaks  his  whole  strength  down  ? 
And  then  there  comes  to  him  the  picture  of  the  Master's 
crucifixion,  and,  humbly  associating  his  o»vn  pain  with 
che  pain  of  Him  on  whose  strength  he  relies,  he  says,  "  I 
am  crucified  with  Christ."  But  as  I  watch  him  I  am 
sure  that  something  new  is  coming  to  him.  Deep  down 
in  that  pain  of  his  he  finds  most  unexpected  treasures. 
He  learns  how  God  loves  him.     He  finds  the  absolute 


2U8  A   GOOD-FKIDAY   SERMON. 

happiness  of  doing  God's  will  whatever  be  its  consequence 
And,  drawn  into  the  spiritual  life,  he  sees  the  future  glorj 
of  the  world  when  Jesus  shall  be  its  King.  He  knows 
all  this  as  he  never  could  have  known  it  save  by  self-sac- 
rifice. Somebody  meets  him  and  pities  him,  and  he  says, 
"  Oh  you  do  not  know  ;  I  am  crucified  indeed  ;  there  is 
pain  enough,  struggle  enough  ;  but  I  am  crucified  with 
Christ.  What  came  to  Him  upon  His  ci-oss  has  come  to 
me  on  mine.  He  has  lifted  me  up  into  His  privilege 
It  is  a  glorious  thing  to  be  crucified  with  Christ." 

You  have  your  cross,  my  friend.  You  do  not  serve 
your  Lord  without  surrender.  There  is  pain  in  the  duty 
which  you  do.  But  if  in  all  your  pain  you  know  that 
God's  love  is  becoming  a  dearer  and  plainer  truth  to  you, 
and  that  you  are  finding  the  pleasure  of  obeying  God ; 
and  that  the  vision  of  the  world's  redemption  is  growing 
more  certain  and  bright,  then  you  can  be  more  than 
brave  ;  you  can  triumph  in  every  task,  in  every  sacrifice. 
Your  cross  has  won  something  of  the  gloiy  and  beauty  of 
your  liOrd's.  Rejoice  and  be  glad,  for  you  are  crucified 
with  Christ. 

This,  then,  is  the  full  truth  of  Good-Friday :  Jesus  was 
Wucified  with  us,  that  we  might  be  crucified  with  Him. 
|He  entered  into  our  pain,  that  we  might  enter  into  His 
J)eace.  He  shared  the  shame  of  the  thieves,  that  Paul 
inight  share  His  glory.  This  double  truth  was  manifest 
/at  the  time  of  Christ's  suffering.  You  remember  the 
penitent  thief.  As  their  crosses  were  lifted  side  by  side, 
he  saw  Christ  entering  into  his  wretchedness.  Before 
the  feeble,  tortured  breath  had  left  the  body,  he  had 
entered  into  Christ's  glory.  First  Christ  was  crucified 
with  him,  and  afterwards  fce  was  crucified  with  Christ. 


A   GOOD-FRIDAY   SERMON.  209 

The  saved  souls  that  have  followed  have  entered  deeper 
than  he  entered  then  into  the  knowledge  of  the  Lord  ; 
but  even  then,  in  one  of  those  in  \^hom  was  shown  the 
wretchedness  of  sin,  was  likewise  shown  the  power  of  the 
ew  salvation. 
And  now  the  scene  of  that  teirible  day  has  come  back 
to  us  once  more.  We  have  knelt  under  its  shadow  to- 
gether. Oh,  my  dear  people,  have  we  indeed  entered 
into  its  doable  truth?  Christ  on  this  day  entered  into 
our  shame.  Deep  into  its  very  heart  He  entered.  The 
blackness  of  its  darkness  was  around  Him.  But  the 
purpose  of  His  sacrifice  was  that  we  might  be  brought  to 
Him.  We  have  not  learnt  the  whole  if  we  have  only 
felt  His  condescension.  Not  till  He  who  has  stooped  to 
us  has  lifted  us  up  to  Him  must  we  be  satisfied.  Not 
till  He  who  hangs  upon  the  cross  beside  us  has  said  to  us, 
"  To-day  thou  shalt  be  with  me  in  Paradise." 

Oh,  that  by  God's  grace  we  may  to-day  accept  ane>^ 
His  sacrifice  for  us  and  give  oui-selves  to  Him  through 
every  self-surrender,  that  He  may  do  for  us  all  that  He 
died  to  do 


XII. 

AN  EASTEK  SERMON. 

*  And  He  laid  His  right  band  upon  me,  saying  onto  me,  Fear  not ;  I  ui 
the  first  and  the  last :  I  am  He  that  liveth,  and  was  dead  ;  and  behold,  I 
un  aliv3  for  evermore,  Amen ;  and  have  the  keys  of  hell  and  of  death." 
—  Rev.  1.  17,  18. 

There  is  only  one  subject  for  to-day.  Upon  this 
morning  when  the  grave  was  broken  and  Jesus  Christ 
arose,  His  resurrection  with  all  that  it  means  for  us  must 
claim  our  thoughts.  Instinctively  the  minds  of  all  men 
turn  that  way.  I  think  that  many  men  who  could  not 
help  hesitating  if  you  asked  them  whether  they  really 
believed  in  the  historical  fact  of  Christ's  arising  from 
the  dead,  and  men  whose  whole  habit  of  thought  is  ma- 
terial, bound  up  with  forces  that  the  eye  and  hand  can 
measure,  still  feel  a  certain  sense  of  exaltation,  the  leap- 
ing of  some  unknown  spiritual  possibility  when  Easter 
morning  opens  on  the  earth.  It  is  something  that  mortal 
men  have  been  able  even  to  imagine  an  immortality,  and 
to  find  pleasure  in  telling  one  another  that  one  at  least 
vf  all  the  billions  who  have  died  and  been  buried  has 
broken  through  the  tomb  and  lived  upon  the  earth  again. 
I  am  sure  that  many  men,  blindly  believing,  who  could 
tell  little  of  what  the  Resurrection  really  means,  have 
yet  got  at  the  heart  of  its  meaning  this  morning  in  a 
sense  of  freedom  and  openness,  of  the  largeness  of  life 
and  the  liveness  of  God,  which  they  have  not  felt,  per- 


AS  EASTER  SERMON.  211 

haps,  since  last  Easter  Day.  Easter  is  remarkable  for 
this,  that  it  seems  to  take  the  most  stupendous  thoughts 
and  through  the  familiar  personality  of  Jesus  bring  them 
to  men's  apprehension  and  affection.  "  Christ  is  arisen  I  " 
"  Christ  is  arisen  1 "  Men  say  to  one  another.  "  Arisen  I ' 
Do  we  know  what  that  means  ?  The  one  invincible 
power  of  the  world  conquered  !  The  one  inevitable  fate 
of  man  avoided  !  Death  tasted  and  then  laid  aside  like 
a  cup  that  the  lips  would  not  drink  !  The  most  inexo- 
rable of  natural  laws,  as  we  call  them,  broken  through  I 
Life  and  divinity  claiming  their  preeminence  I  These 
are  stupendous  thoughts.  And  yet  our  souls  are  holding 
them  to-day.  The  very  children  have  taken  these  stu- 
pendous thoughts  into  their  simple  minds.  They  have 
been  made  real  to  us  through  the  personal  experience  of 
Christ  whom  we  love,  and  they  have  been  translated  by 
our  own  instincts  and  the  prophecies  of  our  own  needs. 
It  is  to  those  who  have  gone  up  the  path  to  the  empty 
tomb  full  of  love  for  Jesus  that  the  great  truth  of  Hia 
resurrection  has  been  shown,  and  their  own  truest  long- 
ings have  been  made  beautiful  and  clear.  Just  as  these 
flowers  have  taken  the  infinite  and  mysterious  forces  of 
nature,  and  put  them  into  these  clear  shapes  of  visible 
beauty,  so  Easter,  the  flower  of  the  year,  takes  the  im- 
measurable truths  of  life  and  immortality,  and  holds 
them  to  us  in  a  beauty  that  we  all  can  see  and  love. 

I  have  taken  for  my  Easter  text  the  account  which 
Christ  gives  of  Himself  after  His  resurrection  and  as- 
cension. It  is  evident  to  any  thoughtful  reader  of  the 
Gospels  that,  with  all  their  joy  in  their  risen  Lord,  the 
disciples  were  in  a  strange  bewilderment  and  puzzle  all 
the  time  that  they  were  with  Him.     They  loved  Hun 


212  AN  EASTER   SERMON. 

just  aa  much  as  ever,  but  they  could  not  seem  to  lay  hold 
of  Him  as  they  used  to  when  He  walked  with  them  and 
talked  with  them,  and  they  were  first  learning  of  His 
nature  and  His  love.  After  His  resurrection  He  eludei 
them.  Their  hearts  burned  within  them  in  His  com* 
pany,  but  He  went  and  came  in  strange,  mysterious 
ways.  They  pondered  His  mystical  and  subtle  words, 
and  always  seemed  to  be  trying  to  find  out  fully  what 
this  Lord  of  theirs  who  had  arisen  from  the  dead  really 
was.  Evidently  He  was  something  more  than  they  had 
thought  Him  when  they  followed  Him  in  Galilee.  And 
all  the  Christian  world,  since,  has  echoed  their  loving 
curiosity,  and  longed  to  know  more  of  the  conqueror 
of  death  and  the  Saviour  of  the  world.  It  is  good  for  us 
to  have  this  passage  in  the  Revelation,  in  which  Christ 
apeaks,  and  declares  Himself,  *'  I  am  He  that  liveth,  and 
was  dead ;  and  behold  I  am  alive  for  evermore ;  and  have 
the  keys  of  hell  and  of  death."  Let  us  try  to  see  some- 
thing of  the  meaning  of  that  sublime  self-description  of 
the  risen  Christ.  See  what  Christ  says  of  Himself  then. 
First,  "  I  am  He  that  liveth."  That  word,  "  liveth," 
is  a  word  of  continuous,  perpetual  life.  It  describes 
the  eternal  existence  which  has  no  beginning  and  no 
end ;  which,  considered  in  its  purity  and  perfectness, 
has  no  present  and  no  past,  but  one  eternal  and  un- 
broken present,  —  one  eternal  now.  It  is  the  "  I  Am  " 
of  the  Jehovah  who  spoke  to  Moses.  "He  that  liveth" 
is  the  Living  One ;  He  whose  life  is  The  Life,  complete 
in  itself,  and  including  all  other  lives  within  itself.  My 
dear  friends,  if  anything  has  come  to  us  to  make  us  feel 
what  a  fragmentary  thing  our  human  life  is,  I  think  there 
is  no  greater  knowledge  for  us  to  win  than  that  the  life 


AN  EASTER  SERMON.  213 

v)f  one  \^ho  loves  us  as  Christ  loves  us  is  an  eternal  life, 
with  the  continuance  and  the  unchangeableness  of  eter- 
nity. See  how  we  alter  ;  how  we  make  plans  and  finish 
them,  or  give  them  up ;  how  we  slip  on  from  one  stage 
of  our  career  into  another  ;  how  past,  present,  and  future 
ire  forever  confusing  our  existence;  how  we  die,  and  oth- 
ers come  on  in  our  places  to  run  through  the  same  mys- 
tery and  bewilderment  of  change  that  we  have  run.  How 
our  heads  ache  and  our  hearts  ache  with  it  all  some- 
times. "  Is  this  living  ?  "  we  exclaim.  "  This  is  merely 
touching  upon  life.  Is  it  living  ?  Is  it  not  like  the 
touching  of  an  insect  on  the  surface  of  a  river  that  ia 
hundreds  of  miles  long?  His  wing  just  brushes  it  at  one 
point  in  its  long  course,  and  ruffles  it  for  a  second,  and 
then  is  gone  again,  and  that  is  all  he  has  to  do  with  it. 
And  that  is  all  we  have  to  do  with  life.  Is  this  living  ?  " 
And  then  there  comes  this  voice  from  Christ:  "I  am 
He  that  liveth,"  He  declares  —  continuous,  eternal  life. 
There  is  a  large,  long  life  that  is  not  transitory.  When 
we  know  that,  then,  just  as  the  children's  lives  set  them- 
selves into  the  life  of  their  father  which  seems  to  them 
really  eternal;  just  as  the  leaves  coming  and  going,  grow 
ing  and  dropping,  find  their  reason  and  consistency  in  the 
long,  unchanging  life  of  the  tree  on  which  they  grow ; 
80  our  lives  find  their  place  in  this  long,  unchanging  life 
ol  Christ,  and  lose  the  vexation  of  their  own  ever-shift- 
iTig  pasts  and  futures  in  the  perpetual  present  of  His 
Deing.  It  is  the  thought  of  an  eternal  God  that  really 
gives  consistency  to  the  fragmentary  lives  of  men,  the 
fragmentary  history  of  the  world.  A  Christ  that  livetb 
redeems  and  rescues  into  His  eternity  the  broken,  tem- 
porary lives  and  works  of  His  disciples. 


Zl4  AN  EASTER   SERMON. 

That  is  the  first  thing,  then.  This  Christ  is  He  thai 
liveth.  But  then  go  on.  See  what  a  wonderful  thins 
comes  next.  "  I  am  He  that  liveth,  and  was  dead."  We 
do  not  begin  to  know  how  wonderful  that  is.  Reniembei 
the  etei'nally  living,  the  very  life  of  all  lives.  And  je% 
into  that  life  of  lives  death  has  come,  —  as  an  epis  '«de.  aa 
incident.  I  do  not  speak  now  of  the  immense  j  raroca* 
tion,  the  immense  love  that  brought  so  strange  a  thing  aa 
the  submission  to  death  on  the  part  of  the  Ever-living 
One.  I  speak  only  of  this,  that  when  death  came  to  Him 
it  was  seen  to  be  not  the  end  of  life,  but  only  an  event 
in  life.  It  did  not  close  His  being,  but  it  was  only  an 
experience  which  that  being  underwent.  That  spiritual 
existence  which  had  been  going  on  forever,  on  which  the 
short  existences  of  men  had  been  strung  into  consistency, 
now  came  and  submitted  itself  to  that  which  men  had 
always  been  submitting  to.  And  lo  1  instead  of  being 
what  men  had  feared  it  was,  what  men  had  hardly 
dared  to  hope  that  it  was  not,  the  putting  out  of  life,  it 
was  seen  to  be  only  the  changing  of  the  circumstances 
of  life,  without  any  real  power  over  the  real  principle  of 
life  ;  any  more  power  than  the  cloud  has  over  the  sun 
that  it  obscures ;  or  than  the  ocean  has  over  the  bubble 
(/  air  that  it  buries  fathoms  deep,  but  whose  buoyant 
nature  it  cannot  destroy,  nor  hinder  it  from  struggling 
towards  and  sometime  reaching  to  the  surface  of  the 
watery  mass  that  covers  it.  That  was  the  wonder  of 
Christ's  death.  As  He  drew  near  to  it  He  himself  trem- 
bled. It  was  an  experience  of  all  His  creation,  but  He 
had  never  felt  it.  To  His  humanity,  His  assumed  flesh, 
it  seemed  terrible.  Gethsemane  bears  witness  how  ter- 
rible it  seemed.     But  He  passed  into  it  for  love  of  na 


AN   fiASTER   SERMON.  215 

And  as  He  came  out  from  it  He  declared  its  nature. 
"  It  is  an  experience  of  life,  not  an  end  of  life.  Life  goes 
on  through  it  and  comes  out  unharmed.  Look  at  me.  I 
am  He  that  liveth,  and  was  dead  I  " 

But  this  is  not  all.  Still  the  description  goes  on  and 
nnfolds  itself.  "  He  that  liveth,  and  was  dead,"  Christ 
Bays,  "  and  behold  I  am  alive  for  evermore."  This  ex- 
istence after  death  is  special,  and  different.  It  is  not  a 
mere  reassertion  of  what  had  been  already  included  in 
His  great  word,  "I  am  He  that  liveth."  It  is  something 
added.  It  is  an  assurance  that  in  the  continued  life  which 
has  once  passed  through  the  experience  of  death  there  is 
something  new,  another  sympathy,  the  only  one  which 
before  could  have  been  lacking  with  his  brethren  whose 
lot  it  is  to  die,  and  so  a  helpfulness  to  them  which  could 
not  otherwise  have  been,  even  in  His  perfect  love.  This 
new  life,  —  the  life  that  has  conquered  death  by  tasting 
it,  which  has  enriched  itself  witha  before  unknown  sym- 
pathy with  men  whose  lives  are  forever  tending  towards 
and  at  last  all  going  down  into  the  darkness  of  the  grave, 
—  this  life  stretches  on  and  out  forever.  It  is  to  know 
no  ending.  So  long  as  there  are  men  living  and  dying, 
BO  long  above  them  and  around  them  there  shall  be  the 
Christ,  the  God-man,  who  liveth,  and  was  dead,  and  is 
alive  for  evermore. 

And  now  think  what  that  great  self-description  of  th« 
Saviour  means,  and  what  it  is  to  us.  What  do  we  need, 
we  men  ?  Ah,  the  happiest  and  most  satisfied  lives 
among  us  have  had  some  glimpses  into  the  depths  of 
their  own  unsatisfactoriness ;  and  the  most  eager  and 
earnest,  and  the  sick  and  the  suffering,  live  in  the  con- 
sciousness of  their  deep  wants  all  the  time.     Here  are 


216  AN  EA3TER  SERMON. 

We  poor  waifs  upon  the  earth,  —  here  with  our  fragments 
of  existence,  —  here  with  the  mystery  of  our  beginning 
and  the  half-understood  purpose  of  our  being  here  at  all , 
and  dark,  clear,  inevitable  before  all  of  us  there  is 
looming  up  the  mighty  wall  of  death.  In  through  its 
narrow  door  every  one  of  the  millions  who  has  hved  has 
passed.  Up  to  that  same  door  every  one  of  us  is  walking. 
Each  throbbing  second  is  a  footfall  that  brings  us  up  a 
little  nearer.  And  beyond  ?  Not  one  of  those  we  have 
Been  enter  has  come  back  to  tell  us  what  there  is  beyond, 
to  tell  us  that  there  really  is  any  such  beyond  as  that 
at  which  our  resolute,  unreasonable  vitality  guesses  and 
hopes  in  spite  of  all  the  darkness.  This  is  man's  life. 
Just  think  of  it.  And  then,  as  you  sit  thinking  of  his 
fragmentariness,  his  certainty  of  death,  his  doubt  about 
a  future,  let  this  voice  come  to  you,  a  voice  clear  with 
personality,  and  sweet  and  strong  ^vith  love  :  "  I  am  He 
that  liveth,  and  was  dead ;  and  am  alive  for  evermore." 
"  He  that  liveth  !  "  And  at  once  your  fragment  of  life 
falls  into  its  place  in  the  eternity  of  life  that  is  bridged 
by  His  being.  "He  that  was  dead!"  And  at  once  death 
changes  from  the  terrible  end  of  life  into  a  most  mys- 
terious but  no  longer  terrible  experience  of  life.  "  He 
that  is  alive  for  evermore  !  "  And  not  merely  there  is  a 
future  beyond  the  gi'ave,  but  it  is  inhabited  by  One  who 
epeaks  to  us,  who  went  there  by  the  way  that  we  must 
go,  who  sees  us  and  can  help  us  as  we  make  our  way 
along,  and  will  receive  us  when  we  come  there.  Is  not 
all  changed  ?  The  devils  of  discontent,  despair,  seK- 
ishness,  sensuality,  how  they  are  scattered  before  that 
voice,  really  heard,  of  the  risen  and  everlasting  Christ. 
He  stands  before  the  door  of  His  tomb  and  speaks,  and 


AN  EASTER  SERMON.  21 T 

these  dark  forms  that  have  onchained  the  souls  and  fet" 
tered  the  activities  of  men  fall  on  their  faces,  like  the 
Roman  soldiers,  who  in  the  gray  dawn  of  the  morning 
saw  Him  come  forth  from  the  tomb  cf  the  Arimathean, 
and  trembled  with  fright,  and  knew  that  their  day  was 
over,  and  that  the  prisoner  they  thought  was  dead  was 
indeed  too  strong  for  them  to  keep.  Would  God  I  could 
make  you  hear  that  voice  on  this  Easter  morning  I 

And  yet  we  have  not  finished  all  our  Lord's  descrip- 
tion of  Himself,  though  we  have  been  led  on  to  anticipate 
in  part  what  He  has  still  to  say.  We  have  talked  thus 
far  only  of  Christ's  resurrection.  We  have  not  spoken 
of  the  resurrection  of  His  disciples  which  He  makes  clear 
and  certain  by  His  own.  But  see  how  He  goes  on  :  "I 
am  He  that  liveth,  and  was  dead  ;  and  behold  I  am  alive 
for  evermore.  And  I  have  the  keys  of  hell  and  of  death." 
Hell  of  course  means  just  Hades,  that  unseen  place, 
'.hat  place  of  departed  spirits  in  which  our  creed  ex- 
presses its  belief.  Christ  then,  having  experienced  death, 
has  the  keys  of  death  to  open  its  meaning,  and  to  guide 
the  way  through  it  for  those  who  are  to  die  like  Him. 
It  is  because  He  died  that  He  holds  the  keys  of  death. 
Can  we  not  understand  that  ?  Do  we  not  know  how  any 
soul  that  has  passed  through  a  great  experience  holds 
the  keys  of  that  experience,  so  that  as  He  sees  another 
coming  up  to  it  just  as  ignorantly  and  fearfully  as  he 
came,  he  can  run  up  to  this  new-comer  and  open  the 
door  for  him,  show  him  on  what  side  this  experience  is 
best  entered,  lead  him  through  the  dark  passages  of  it 
where  he  could  not  easily  find  his  way  alone,  and  at  last 
bring  him  out  into  the  splendor  of  the  light  beyond.  I 
wm  tempted  to  stop  and  think  of  this  with  you  for  a  mO' 


218  AN   EASTER  SERMON. 

ment,  by  the  way,  for  this  is  what  binds  men's  lives  most 
closely  and  most  vitally  together.  Suppose  you  have  nad 
a  life  of  great  sorrow.  Or,  suppose  you  have  had  some 
one  great  sorrow  in  your  life.  It  is  not  a  mere  supposi- 
tion. I  look  into  your  faces  and  I  know  how  true  it  ia 
of  many  and  many  of  you,  my  people.  Well,  you  have 
suffered,  and  come  through  your  suffering  into  the  light. 
And  as  you  stand  there  looking  back,  who  is  it  that 
comes  up  the  road  where  you  remember  to  have  walked 
years  back,  when  you  were  a  boy,  the  road  that  led  you 
to  your  suffering  ?  You  look,  and  lo  I  another  light  and 
careless  heart  is  coming,  singing,  up  the  road  by  which 
you  came.  You  know  where  the  road  leads  to,  but  he 
has  not  yet  caught  sight  of  the  trial  that  blocks  it.  Sud- 
denly he  comes  in  sight  of  that  trial,  and  starts  back. 
He  stands  in  fright.  He  trembles.  He  is  ready  to  run. 
"  Father,  save  me  from  it,"  you  hear  him  cry.  What 
can  you  do  for  him  ?  If  you  are  wise  and  willing,  you 
go  down  and  meet  him,  and  you  hold  out  before  him,  in 
some  sympathetic  act  or  word,  the  key  of  your  experi- 
ence. *'  Let  me  show  jou,"  you  say,  "  not  because  J  am 
any  greater  or  better  than  you,  but  only  because  tne 
Father  led  me  there  first.  Let  me  show  you  the  way 
into,  the  way  through,  and  the  way  out  of  this  sorrow 
which  you  cannot  escape.  Into  it  by  perfect  submission ; 
through  it  with  implicit  obedience  ;  out  of  it  into  purified 
passions  and  entire  love."  He  sees  the  key  in  your  hand. 
He  sees  the  experience  in  your  face,  and  so  he  trusts  you. 
How  useless  it  is  to  go  to  any  brother  without  the  key,  — 
without  the  experience  of  that  which  he  has  got  to  meet. 
He  thanks  us  and  turns  away.  Who  are  we  that  we 
should  guide  him?     It  is  so  with  temptation.     It  is  so 


AN   EASTER  SEBMON.  211r 

mth  repentance.  They  who  have  undergone  and  over 
C5ome  stand  with  their  keys  to  open  the  ].>ortals  of  life's 
great  emergencies  to  their  brethren.  The  wondrous  power 
of  experience !  And  see  how  beautiful  and  ennobling  this 
makes  our  sorrows  and  temptations.  Every  stroke  of  sor- 
row that  issues  into  light  and  joy  is  God  putting  into  your 
hand  the  key  of  that  sorrow  to  unlock  it  for  all  the  poor 
souls  whom  you  may  see  approaching  it,  through  all  your 
future  life.  It  is  a  noble  thing  to  take  that  key  and  use 
it.  There  are  no  nobler  lives  on  earth  than  those  of  men 
and  women  who  have  passed  through  many  experiences  of 
many  sorts,  and  who  now  go  about  with  calm  and  happy 
and  sober  faces,  holding  their  keys,  some  golden  and  some 
iron,  and  finding  their  joy  in  opening  the  gates  of  these 
experiences  to  younger  souls,  and  sending  them  into  them 
full  of  intelligence  and  hope  and  trust.  Such  lives,  I 
think,  we  may  all  pray  to  grow  into  as  we  grow  older,  and 
pass  through  more  and  more  of  the  experiences  of  life. 

And  now  this  is  just  exactly  what  Jesus  does  for  us  by 
His  resurrection.  Having  the  keys  of  death  and  hell, 
He  comes  to  us  as  we  are  drawing  near  to  death,  and 
He  opens  the  doors  on  both  sides  of  it,  and  lets  us  look 
through  it,  and  shows  us  immortality.  Now  you  see  we 
have  passed  over  from  Himself  to  us.  Not  merely  He 
lives  forever,  but  so  shall  we  ;  for  us,  too,  death  shall  be 
not  an  end,  but  an  experience  ;  and  beyond  it  for  us,  just 
as  for  Him,  stre':ches  immortahty.  Because  He  lives,  we 
shall  live  also. 

And  now  shall  we  try  to  tell  to  one  another  what  it  is 
to  be  immortal,  and  to  know  it ;  what  it  is  to  have  death 
broken  down  so  that  life  stretches  out  beyond  it,  the 
same  life  as  this,  opening,  expanding,  Vit  forever  the 


220  AN  EASTER   SERMON 

«ame  essentially ;  just  as  to  Him  that  always  liveth  th« 
tife  that  He  liveth  evermore  is  the  same  after  the  death 
on  Calvary,  though  with  some  entrance  of  something  — 
•ome  new  knowledge,  and  the  sympathy  of  a  new  experi« 
ence  —  that  was  not  there  before  ?  This  is  certainly  what 
I  want  to  tell  on  Easter  Day  to  all  these  men  and  women 
who  are  thinking  tenderly  and  longingly  of  their  own 
dead ;  perhaps  thinking  fearfully  of  their  own  death  to- 
day. But,  as  I  try,  I  am  rejoiced  indeed  that  there  is  so 
much  in  the  everlasting  associations  of  the  day  to  speak 
to  you  what  I  know  I  must  fail  to  speak.  But  let  me 
tiy. 

And  first  of  all  I  think  of  the  immense  and  noble  free- 
dom from  many  of  the  most  trying  and  vexatious  of  our 
temptations  which  comes  to  a  man  to  whom  the  curtain 
has  been  lifted  and  the  vail  rent  in  twain.  Let  me  fancy 
myseK  a  man  who  has  no  vision  beyond  this  world.  Let 
me  bow  myself  down,  and  shut  myself  in,  until  all  the 
thoug'ht  of  my  life  stops  sharp  and  short  there  at  the 
grave.  I  am  going  to  work  along  here,  till  when  ?  per- 
haps till  to-morrow  morning,  perhaps  till  fifty  years 
nence ;  what  matters  it  ?  Certainly  for  a  very  minute  of 
time,  and  then  it  will  be  all  over ;  what  I  do  I  must  not 
only  begin,  I  must  finish  here  and  now.  All  my  desires, 
those  deep,  deep  wishes  that  are  in  ray  soul  because  I  am 
a  man,  the  desire  to  accomplish  something,  the  desire  to 
please,  the  desire  to  discover  and  display  myself,  —  all  of 
them  good  desires,  all  of  them  parts  of  my  humanity,  — 
they  must  all  be  satisfied  before  the  curtain  falls  or  they 
can  never  find  satisfaction,  for  that  falling  of  the  curtain 
is  the  end  of  all.  What  a  coward  I  become  I  What  a 
poor,  timid,  limited,  temporary  thing  I     I  must  attempt 


AN   EASTER   SERMON.  22  < 

nothing  80  large  that  I  cannot  finish  it  before  the  sun 
goes  down.  I  must  desire  nothing  that  this  life  cannot 
bestow.  If  I  want  to  please,  whom  shall  I  please  ?  Only 
these  cramped  and  crippled  and  half -judging  men  about 
me,  to  whom  I  must  degrade  myself  to  win  their  honor. 
If  I  want  to  make  myself  known,  I  must  take  this  crude 
self  which  I  am  now,  and  hold  it  up  and  make  that  self 
known,  for  it  is  "  now  or  never,"  since  the  end  may  come 
at  once.  How  superficial,  restless,  impatient !  what  a 
Blave  I  come  to  be  !  Where  is  my  independence  ?  How 
the  world  has  me  down  and  treads  on  me  !  —  treads  me 
into  the  dust  and  mire  of  the  present,  since  I  know  no 
future  world  into  which  I  can  lift  myself  up  and  run 
away.  And  now  beside  me  all  the  time  there  is  another 
man,  and  the  difference  between  him  and  me  is  this,  that 
he  believes  in  immortality.  Somehow  he  has  got  hold  of 
the  truth  of  resurrection.  To  him,  death  is  a  jar,  a 
break,  a  deep  mysterious  change,  but  not  the  end  of  life. 
I  know  that  men  may  claim  to  believe  that,  and  yet  live 
on  like  dogs.  Men  may  claim  to  believe  that,  and  yet  be 
slaves  and  cowards.  But  this  man  really  believes  it ; 
and  see  what  it  does  for  him.  See  how  free  it  makes 
him.  How  it  breaks  his  tyrannies  !  He  can  undertake 
works  of  self-culture,  or  the  development  of  truth,  far,  far 
too  vast  for  the  earthly  life  of  any  Methuselah  to  finish, 
and  yet  smile  calmly  and  work  on  when  men  tell  him 
that  he  will  die  before  his  work  is  done.  Die !  Shall 
not  the  sculptor  sleep  a  hundred  times  before  the  statue 
he  begins  to-day  is  finished,  and  wake  a  hundred  times 
more,  ready  for  his  work,  bringing  with  a  hundred  new 
mornings  to  his  work  the  strength  and  the  visions  that 
haye  come  to  him  m  his  slumber?     He  can  desire  ta 


222  AK   EASTEK  SERMON. 

please,  and  yet  be  perfectly  patient  as  he  waits  for  a 
"  well  done "  that  will  fall  on  his  ears  out  of  divine  lips 
when  this  world  and  its  shows  are  over.  He  can  desire  to 
show  himself,  and  yet  live  in  obscurity  content,  sure  that 
some  day  —  what  does  it  matter  when  to  him  who  has 
eternity  to  live  in  ?  —  God  will  call  him,  and  bid  men  see 
in  him  the  work  of  love  and  grace.  Can  you  picture  the 
independence  of  a  man  like  that  ?  What  are  my  tempta 
tions  to  him  ?  How  he  walks  over  them  with  feet  that 
follow  his  far-seeing  sight  like  a  man  that  strides  with  his 
firm  steps  and  far-oif  sight  and  never  sees  the  pebble  in 
the  path  behind  which  a  crawling  insect  is  blocked  and 
hindered.  Sometimes  when  one  is  travelling  through  a 
foreign  country  it  happens  that  he  stops  a  day  or  two,  a 
week  or  two,  in  some  small  village,  where  everything  is 
local,  which  has  little  communication  with  the  outside 
world ;  where  the  people  are  born  and  grow  up,  and 
grow  old  and  die  without  thinking  of  leaving  their  little 
nest  among  the  mountains.  The  traveller  shares  for  a 
little  while  their  local  life,  shuts  himself  in  to  their 
limitations.  But  all  the  while  he  is  freer  than  they  are ; 
he  is  not  tyrannized  over  by  the  small  prescriptions  and 
petty  standards  that  are  despots  to  them.  He  knows 
of,  and  belongs  to,  a  larger  world.  He  is  kept  free 
by  the  sense  of  the  world  beyond  the  mountains,  from 
which  he  came  and  to  which  he  is  going  back  again* 
And  so  when  a  man,  strong  in  the  conviction  of  immor- 
tality, really  counts  himself  a  stranger  and  a  pilgrim 
among  the  multitudes  who  know  no  home,  no  world  but 
this  ,  then  he  is  free  among  them  ;  free  from  the  worldly 
tyrannies  that  bind  them;  free  from  their  temptations 
to  be  cowardly  and  mean.     The  wall  of  death,  beyond 


AH  EASTER   SEBMON.  223 

<^hich  they  ne^er  look,  is  to  him.  only  a  mountain  that 
can  be  crossed,  from  whose  top  he  shall  see  eternity, 
where  he  belongs.  This  is  the  freedom  of  the  best  child- 
hood and  the  best  old  age,  these  two  ends  of  life  in  which 
the  sense  of  immortality  is  realest  and  most  true. 

How  good  it  would  be  for  us  if  this  bright  Easter  Day 
could  show  us  immortality  and  so  set  some  of  us  free. 
There  are  some  things  that  you  are  afraid  to  do,  some 
right  word  you  are  afraid  to  speak,  some  wasteful  or 
wicked  habit  you  are  afraid  to  give  up,  some  self-culture 
that  you  are  afraid  to  undertake,  some  attempt  to  be  use- 
ful in  some  little  enterprising  way  from  which  you  shrink 
out  of  a  feeble  fear  of  what  people  will  say  about  it,  out 
of  a  fear  of  the  little  world.  You  would  get  rid  of  that 
fear  instantly  if  you  realized  your  immortality  and  stood 
in  the  midst  of  the  great  world  of  your  eternal  life,  as 
the  mists  that  have  hung  thick  and  damp  in  the  valleys 
scatter  and  are  lost  as  soon  as  they  struggle  up  into  the 
free  air  above  the  hill-tops.  What  is  there  in  scorn  or 
criticism,  that  dies  the  day  it  is  born,  that  can  terrify, 
however  it  may  pain,  the  man  who  is  to  live  forever  ? 
He  is  free.  He  has  entered  into  the  glorious  liberty  of 
the  children  of  God. 

And  so,  again,  the  whole  position  of  duty  is  elevated 
by  the  thought,  the  knowledge  of  immortality.  Duty  ia 
a  vast  power  and  needs  a  vast  world  to  work  in.  I  do 
not  deny,  God  forbid !  I  love  to  watch  the  power  of  iuty 
working  in  a  man  who  is  unable  to  believe  that  the  life 
he  lives  is  any  more  than  an  insect's  life.  It  is  a  dogged 
stoical  thing,  but  there  is  something  that  makes  us  love 
It  with  a  love  that  is  all  the  tenderer  because  it  is  so 
melancholy,  in  the  stout  resolve  that   says,  "  I  do  not 


224  AN  EASTER   SERMON. 

dare  to  think  that  I  shall  lire  after  this  life  is  over,, 
and  it  may  be  over  with  the  next  breath  I  draw,  but 
nevertheless,  all  blind  and  useless  as  it  seems,  I  will  not 
do  what  my  conscienct?  calls  a  wrong  thing,  and  I  will  do 
what  my  conscience  says  is  right,  while  I  am  here  upon 
the  earth."  There  is  something  beautiful  about  that,  but 
how  sad  and  dark  it  is.  It  is  a  resolution  for  rare  souls. 
Who  ever  dreams  that  the  whole  race  could  begin  to  live 
on  an  impulse  of  duty  as  frigid  and  austere  as  that  ?  But 
now  let  Christ  come  to  that  brave  man,  holding  the  keys 
of  death  and  hell.  Oh,  brave  man,  do  not  be  so  in  love 
with  your  own  bravery  as  to  insist  upon  the  hard  stoical 
duty  that  knows  no  future,  when  He  opens  before  you 
the  spiritual  future  that  really  belongs  to  every  dutiful 
deed,  and  shows  you  a  world  in  which  these  hard  seeds 
that  you  are  sowing  now  will  bear  their  fruit.  It  seems 
to  me  that  this  day  is  a  day  for  strong  and  cheerful 
resolutions,  because  it  is  a  day  when,  with  the  spiritual 
world  open  before  us,  we  can  all  catch  sight  of  the  des- 
tiny of  duty,  —  of  how,  some  time  or  other,  every  good 
habit  is  to  conquer  and  every  good  deed  wear  its  crown 
Come,  take  that  task  of  yours  which  you  have  been 
hesitating  before,  and  shirking  and  walking  around  and 
around,  and  on  this  Easter  Day  lift  it  up  and  do  it.  It  is 
your  duty,  That  which  sounds  hard  and  cold  on  other 
days  ought  to  sound  warm  and  inspiring  to-day.  For  to* 
day  we  can  see  that  duty  is  worth  while.  Duty  is  the 
one  thing  on  earth  that  is  so  vital  that  it  can  go  through 
Jeath  and  come  to  glory.  Duty  is  the  one  seed  that  haa 
such  life  in  it  that  it  can  lie  as  long  as  God  will  in  the 
mummy  hand  of  death,  and  yet  be  ready  any  moment  to 
•tart  into  new  growth  in  the  new  soil  where  He  shall  set 


AN  EASTEB   SERMON.  22S 

It.  So  let  US  all  consecrate  our  Easter  Day  by  resolutely 
taking  up  some  new  duty  which  we  know  we  ought  to 
do.  We  bind  ourselves  so  by  a  new  chain  to  eternity,  to 
the  eternity  of  Him  who,  for  the  joy  that  was  eet  before 
Him«  endured  the  cross,  despising  the  shame,  and  is  set 
down  at  God's  right  hand. 

I  had  wanted  to  speak  again  of  the  new  life  that  ia 
given  to  friendship,  to  all  our  best  relations  to  one  an- 
other by  the  power  of  immortality.  But  I  must  not 
dwell  on  this  or  much  besides.  To  speak  about  immor- 
tality is  like  speaking  about  life.  There  is  nothing  that 
it  does  not  touch.  I  think  that  the  two  things  above  all 
others  that  have  made  men  in  all  ages  believe  in  immor- 
tality, apart,  so  far  as  we  know,  from  any  revelation  save 
that  which  is  written  in  the  human  heart,  have  been  the 
broken  lives  and  the  broken  friendships  of  the  world. 
Men  could  not  believe  that  this  young  life,  broken  oS  so 
suddenly,  was  done  forever.  It  suggested  its  own  con- 
tinuance. And  when  they  had  been  growing  into  sympa- 
thy with  some  rich  and  true  soul  for  years,  and  were  just 
catching  sight  of  new  immense  regions  in  him  that  were 
still  to  be  comprehended,  it  was  impossible  for  them  to 
stand  by  his  coffin  and  think  that  it  was  all  over.  In- 
stinctively friendship  triumphed  over  the  grave.  Love 
was  too  strong  for  death  !  And  yet,  what  terrible  mis- 
givings I  Perhaps  there  is  no  more  !  Perhaps  it  is  all 
over  Until,  to  the  soul  standing  with  all  its  question- 
Tigs  before  the  door  of  the  tomb,  He  who  liveth  and  was 
dead  came  as  He  came  to  Martha,  and  holding  out  the 
key  of  death,  said  the  great  final  conclusive  words, 
"  Thy  brother  shall  rise  again."  Men's  souls  leaped  to 
that  word  because  they  wanted  to  beUeve  it,  and  had  not 

15 


226  AN  EASTER  SERMON. 

dared  wholly  to  believe  it  till  He  showed  them  that  it 
was  true.  And  now  if  we  believe  in  Him,  we  do  believe 
it,  and  death  is  really  changed  to  us,  and  the  doad  are 
really  living  by  the  assurance  of  the  living  Christ.  It  ia 
a  beautiful  connection,  one  whose  mysterious  beauty  we 
are  always  learning  more  and  more,  that  the  deeper  our 
spiritual  experience  of  Christ  becomes,  the  more  our 
soul's  life  really  hangs  on  His  life  as  its  savior  and  con- 
tinual friend,  the  more  real  becomes  to  us  the  unquenched 
life  of  those  who  hav^  gone  from  us  to  be  with  Him.  In 
those  moments  when  Christ  is  most  real  to  me,  when  He 
lives  in  the  centre  of  my  desires  and  I  am  resting  most 
heavily  upon  His  help,  in  those  moments  I  am  surest 
that  the  dead  are  not  lost,  that  those  whom  this  Christ 
in  whom  I  trust  has  taken  He  is  keeping.  The  more  He 
lives  to  me  the  more  they  live.  I  want  to  make  you  feel 
this  power  of  the  living  Christ  to-day.  Another  year 
has  gone  from  us  since  last  Easter  and  taken  its  dead 
with  it.  Out  of  your  families  and  out  of  this  parish 
family  of  ours  they  have  gone.  Your  hearts  are  telling 
them  over  as  I  speak.  The  little  child  and  the  tired  old 
man.  The  brave  and  hopeful  boys  and  girls  carrying 
their  hope  and  courage  and  aspiration  into  other  worlds, 
and  leaving  behind  them  memories  in  which  the  beauty 
and  the  dearness  and  the  pride,  struggle  with  the  sad- 
ness till  we  cannot  separate  them  or  tell  which  is  the 
greatest.  The  young  mother  has  left  her  children.  The 
husband  has  left  the  wife.  The  wife  has  gone  down  the 
dark  way  before  the  husband.  The  bright  and  sunny 
friend  whom  many  knew,  and  whom  all  who  knew  him 
loved  for  his  kind  heart  and  ready  charity  and  cheerful 
temper  and  patient  spirit  and  constant  unselfishness  and 


AN  EASTER   SEKMON  22 1 

simple  faith.  All  these  have  gone  fri-m  us  to  the  world 
of  God.  As  I  wrote  this  I  turned  to  our  parish  book, 
and  looked  down  the  list,  and  it  was  indeed  a  long  one, 
The  old  and  the  young,  their  deaths  stood  written  ^here 
together  like  the  mingled  graves  in  a  graveyard.  There 
were  more  old  than  young,  and  yet  the  young  were  not 
few.  But  as  I  read  and  thought  of  Easter  Day,  I  could 
not  think  that  they  were  gone.  On  the  first  Easter  Day 
the  graves  were  opened,  and  the  dead  came  forth  and 
went  into  the  holy  city,  and  were  seen  of  many.  If  the 
city  of  our  heart  is  holy  with  the  presence  of  a  living 
Christ,  then  the  dear  dead  will  come  to  us  and  we  shall 
know  they  are  not  dead  but  living,  and  bless  Him  who 
has  been  their  Redeemer,  and  rejoice  in  the  work  that 
they  are  doing  for  Him  in  His  perfect  world,  and  press 
on  joyously  towards  our  own  redemption,  not  fearing 
even  the  grave,  since  by  its  side  stands  He  whom  we 
know  and  love,  who  has  the  keys  of  death  and  hell. 

A  living  Christ,  dear  friends !  the  old,  ever  new,  ever 
blessed  Easter  truth  1  He  liveth  ;  He  was  dead ;  He  is 
alive  for  evermore.  Oh  that  everything  dead  and  formal 
might  go  out  of  our  creed,  out  of  our  life,  out  of  our 
heart  to-day.  He  is  alive  '  Do  you  believe  it  ?  What 
are  you  dreary  for,  O  mourner  ?  what  are  you  hesitating 
for,  O  worker  ?  what  are  you  fearing  death  for,  O  man  ? 
Oh,  if  we  could  only  lift  up  our  heads  and  live  w^ith 
Him;  live  new  lives,  high  lives,  lives  of  hope  and  leva 
and  holiness,  to  which  death  should  be  nothing  but  the 
breaking  away  of  the  last  cloud,  and  the  letting  of  the 
life  out  to  its  completion. 

May  God  giro  us  some  such  blessing  fox  our  Eastef 
Day. 


xin. 

A  TRINITY-SUNDAY   SERMON. 

■  Far  throQgh  Him  we  both  have  access  by  one  Spirit  unto  the  Fathec."— 
Eph.  ii.  18. 

To-day  is  Trinity-Sunday.  That  truth  from  which  oui 
church  takes  its  name ;  that  truth  which  is  the  centre 
and  circumference  of  our  faith,  this  one  day  is  specially 
Bet  apart  for  its  commemoration,  and  we  are  to  talk  of 
it  with  one  another.  But  nothing  could  be  worse  for  ns; 
than  to  think  that  the  truth  of  the  Trinity  was  one  that 
could  be  separated  from  all  others  and  laid  aside  by  itself, 
to  be  specially  taken  up  and  discussed  upon  a  given  day. 
Why,  we  are  preaching  on  the  Trinity  always.  I  should 
count  any  Sunday's  work  unfitly  done  in  which  the  Trin- 
ity was  not  the  burden  of  our  preaching.  For  when  we 
preach  the  Fatherhood  of  God  we  preach  His  divinity ; 
when  we  point  to  Christ  the  perfect  Saviour,  it  is  a  Di- 
vine Redeemer  that  we  declare ;  and  when  we  plead  with 
men  to  hear  the  voice  and  yield  to  the  persuasions  of  tht 
Holy  Spirit,  the  Comforter  into  whose  comfort  we  invite 
them  is  Divine.  The  divinity  of  Father,  Son,  and  Holy 
Ghost,  this  is  our  Gospel.  By  this  Gospel  we  look  for  sal- 
vation. It  is  a  Gospel  to  be  used,  to  be  believed  in,  and 
to  be  lived  by ;  not  merely  to  be  kept  and  admired  and 
discussed  and  explained.  But,  as  a  telescope  which  ii 
valued  for  its  precious  uses  may  be  sometimes  taken  down 


A   TRINITY-SUNDAY   SERMON.  229 

and  its  parts  examined,  its  beautiful  construction  dna« 
lyzed,  so  the  truth  of  the  Trinity  may  sometimes  be  made 
the  subject  of  a  special  lecture.  Only  we  are  always  to 
refl>3mbei  that  the  truth  is  given  to  us,  not  to  be  lectured 
on,  but  to  be  lived  by ;  as  the  telescope  is  precious  be- 
cause it  can  sweep  the  sky  and  separate  the  star-dust 
into  recognizable  worlds  ;  and  not  because  its  parts  are 
beautifully  adjusted  and  its  whole  construction  is  a  mir- 
acle of  mechanism.  There  is  always  a  tendency  to  value 
doctrines  for  their  symmetry  and  interior  consistency, 
instead  of  for  their  uses  ;  as  if  we  built  a  new  steam- 
engine  and  kept  it  under  a  glass-house,  instead  of  setting 
it  upon  the  road.  Its  efficiency  upon  the  road  is  the 
only  true  test  of  whether  it  is  really  worthy  of  the  hom- 
age that  we  would  pay  it  in  its  crystal  shrine.  Let  us 
remember  this  always  as  we  talk  and  think  about  the 
doctrine  of  the  Trinity. 

The  doctrine  of  the  Trinity  is  the  description  of  what 
we  know  of  God.  We  have  no  right  to  say  that  it  is  the 
description  of  God  ;  for  what  there  may  be  in  Deity  of 
which  we  have  no  knowledge,  how  can  we  tell  ?  We  are 
only  sure  that  the  divine  life  is  infinitely  greater  than 
our  humanity  can  comprehend  ;  and  we  are  sure,  too,  +hat 
not  even  a  revelation  in  the  most  perfect  form,  through 
the  moot  perfect  medium  conceivable,  could  make  known 
to  the  human  intelligence  anything  in  God  save  that 
which  has  relationship  to  human  life.  Man  may  reveal 
himself  to  the  brutes,  and  the  revelation  may  be  clear 
and  correct  so  far  as  it  can  go,  but  it  must  have  its  limit. 
Only  that  part  of  man  can  cross  the  line  and  show  itself 
to  the  perception  of  that  lower  world  which  finds  in 
brutedom  some  point  which  it  can  touch.     Our  strength 


23(J  A   TRINITT-SUNDAT   SERMON. 

may  reveal  itself  to  their  fear;  our  kindness  to  theii 
power  of  love ;  some  part  of  our  vribdom,  even,  to  their 
dim  capacity  of  education  ;  but  all  the  while  there  is  a 
vaat  manhood  of  intellect,  of  taste,  of  spirituality,  of 
wHch  they  never  know.  And  so  I  am  sure  that  the 
di"\r.ne  nature  is  three  persons,  but  one  God ;  but  how 
much  more  than  that  I  cannot  know.  That  deep  law 
which  runs  through  all  life,  by  which  the  higher  any  nat- 
ure is,  the  more  manifold  and  simple  at  once,  the  more 
full  of  complexity  and  unity  at  once,  it  grows,  is  easily 
accepted  as  applicable  to  the  highest  of  all  natures,  — 
God.  In  the  manifoldness  of  His  being  these  three  per- 
sonal existences,  Creator,  Redeemer,  Sanctifier,  easily 
make  themselves  known  to  the  human  life.  I  tell  the 
story  of  them,  and  that  is  my  doctrine  of  the  Trinity. 
But  let  me  not  say  that  that  is  all.  To  other  worlds 
of  other  needs,  and  so  of  other  understandings  (for  our 
needs  are  always  the  avenues  for  our  intelligence),  other 
sides  of  the  personal  force  of  the  divine  life  must  have 
issued.  It  is  not  for  us  to  catalogue  and  inventory 
Deity  ;  only  in  humble  gratitude  and  reverence  to  bear 
our  witness  of  the  manifestation  of  God  to  us  for  our 
salvation.  And  so  our  doctrine  of  the  Trinity  is  our  ao- 
count  of  what  we  know  of  God. 

This  idea  seems  to  be  borne  out  by  our  text.  Hear 
it  again :  "  Through  Christ  Jesus  we  all  have  access  by 
one  Spirit  unto  the  Father."  St.  Paul  is  not  describing 
God.  He  is  recounting  the  story  that  he  loves  to  tell, 
—  the  story  of  man's  salvation.  That  story  is  always 
breaking  from  his  eager  lips.  In  his  encouragements 
and  his  rebukes,  in  his  consolations  and  his  arguments, 
the  history  of  man's  salvation  to  God,  through  Jesus,  by 


A   TRINITY-SUNDAY   SERMON.  231 

the  Spirit,  is  the  burden  of  the  whole.  He  is  telling  it 
always.  That  is  what  he  lives  for.  He  is  telling  it  here. 
He  does  not  define  God.  With  no  confident  boldness 
does  his  sight  try  to  sweep  around  the  infinite  circle  of 
Deity  and  include  it  all ;  but  only  the  God  of  man,  the 
God  of  the  human  salvation,  whom  he  knows  with  his 
whole  heart,  Him  he  announces  with  his  ardent  lips. 
This  is  the  first  thing  we  notice,  —  that  Paul  describes 
only  the  God  whom  man  can  know. 

And  then  the  next  thing  we  notice  is  the  completeness 
•with  which  this  God,  this  part  of  God,  is  apprehended 
and  depicted.  See  what  he  says.  He  is  describing  man's 
salvation.  It  is  one  single  thing,  —  the  saving  of  a  man. 
Here  is  the  sinner  in  his  sinfulness ;  there  is  the  saint  in 
his  glory.  It  is  the  same  man  still,  and  the  whole  act, 
from  the  beginning  to  the  end,  —  the  act  that  took  him 
in  his  sinfulness  and  lifted  him  thence,  and  set  him  in  his 
glory,  is  one  single  act.  It  stands  a  unit  among  the 
works  of  God's  omnipotence.  It  is  one  throb  of  the  all- 
ioving  heart ;  it  is  one  movement  of  the  Almighty  arm. 
And  yet  this  simple  act,  salvation,  is  clearly  distinguished 
into  its  parts.  See  how  clearly  St.  Paul  discriminates 
them.  Every  act  is  made  up  of  a  purpose,  a  method,  and 
a  power.  And  so  the  purpose  and  the  method  and  the 
power  are  here.  What  is  the  purpose  or  the  end  ?  "  To 
the  Father  we  all  have  access."  What  is  the  method  ? 
»*  Through  Christ  Jesus."  What  is  the  power  ?  '*  By 
tJie  Spirit."  Through  Christ  Jesus  we  all  have  access, 
by  one  Spirit,  unto  the  Father.  In  this  one  total  act, 
the  end,  the  method,  and  the  power  are  distinguishable. 
Each  stands  out  separate  and  clear.  And  what  is  more, 
each  is  distinctly  personal.     A  personal  name  is  given  to 


232  A   TRINITY-SUNDAY   SERMON. 

the  designation  of  each  element.  This  salvation,  which 
is  all  the  work  of  God,  first,  last,  and  midmost,  has  its 
divine  personalities  distinct  for  its  end  and  its  method 
and  its  power.  It  is  a  salvation  to  the  Father,  through 
the  Son,  and  by  the  Spirit.  The  salvation  is  all  one 
yet  in  it  method,  end,  and  po\^er  are  recognizable.  H 
is  a  three  in  one. 

Let  us  look  into  this  a  little  more  deeply.  The  per- 
fection of  any  act  consists  in  the  elevation  and  the  har- 
mony of  these  three  elements  ;  its  end,  its  method,  and 
its  power.  Take,  for  instance,  the  act  of  a  boy's  educa- 
tion. It  may  extend  over  twenty  years,  but  it  is  capable 
of  being  considered  as  one  act  still  from  the  time  it 
begins  in  the  nursery  to  the  time  it  culminates  in  his 
profession.  Now  the  perfection  of  that  education  will 
depend  upon  the  perfection  of  its  end,  its  method,  and 
its  power,  and  upon  their  being  harmonious  with  and 
suitable  to  one  another ;  each  must  be  worthy  of  the 
rest.  For  instance,  if  the  end  be  low,  if  no  high  ideal 
of  scholarship  and  character  is  set  up  at  the  first,  and 
kept  clear  all  along,  you  may  give  him  the  best  books 
and  the  best  teachers,  you  may  inspire  him  with  the 
most  eager  enthusiasm  ;  but  you  turn  out  only  a  half- 
taught  scholar,  a  half -made  man,  as  the  result.  The 
end  was  not  worthy  of  the  method  and  the  power.  Or, 
again,  you  set  the  highest  standard  up  to  be  aimed  at, 
and  you  put  the  purest  ambitions  into  the  boy's  nature ; 
but  you  furnish  only  poor  means,  poor  schools,  poor 
teachers,  and  once  more  the  education  is  imperfect.  The 
method  is  not  worthy  of  the  end  and  the  power.  Or, 
again,  you  make  the  ideal  perfect,  and  you  provide  all 
the  appliances  of  study  at  their  very  best ;  but  you  put 


A   TKINITY-SUNDAY   SERMON.  233 

only  some  low  or  mercenary  impulse  into  the  scholar's 
heart,  perhaps  a  mere  servile  submission  to  your  au- 
thority, perhaps  only  a  selfish  idea  of  the  money  he  ifl 
going  to  get  out  of  his  learning,  and  again  a  most  im- 
perfect product  comes.  This  time  the  power  has  been  un- 
worthy of  the  method  and  the  end.  The  ideal  is  the 
end  to  which,  the  school  training  is  the  method  through 
which,  the  ambition  is  the  power  by  which,  the  act  of  edu- 
cation is  completed.  Only  when  these  three  are  one,  only 
when  each  is  perfect  and  so  worthy  of  the  others,  only 
when  in  their  perfect  unity  they  entirely  cooperate, 
while  in  their  essential  diversity  they  minister  to  one 
another,  —  only  then,  when  the  end  is  sacred,  and  the 
means  are  sacred,  and  the  power  is  sacred,  does  the  sa- 
cred result  go  forth  into  the  world,  and  the  boy's  educa- 
tion is  complete. 

This  is  an  illustration.  Instead  of  a  boy's  education, 
put  a  man's  salvation.  That  is  the  perfect  education,  of 
which  all  others  are  but  types.  And  there  we  look  for 
and  we  find  the  same  harmony  of  end,  method,  and 
power.  Make  either  unworthy  of  the  others  and  the 
salvation  is  not  complete.  If  it  be  not  to  the  Father, 
the  Son's  redemption  is  in  vain.  If  it  be  not  through  the 
Son,  the  Father  waits  and  the  Spirit  moves  for  naught. 
If  it  be  not  by  the  Spirit,  the  Father's  heart  stands  open 
and  the  method  of  grace  is  perfect,  but  the  unmoved 
Boul  stands  inactive  and  unsaved.  The  Scripture  reve- 
lation comes  to  tell  us  that  end,  method,  and  power,  all 
are  perfect,  and  each  must  thus  be  worthy  of  the  rest. 
The  three  are  one.  Each  is  eternal,  and  yet  as  the  old 
creed  cries,  "  There  are  not  three  Eternals,  but  One  Eter- 
nal."'    Each  is  God,  and  yet  "there  are  not  three  Goda, 


2.S4  A   TRINITY-SUNDAY   SERMON. 

but  one  God," — not  three  salvations,  but  one  salvation, 
with  its  equal  end  and  method  and  power,  and  so  by  the 
Trinity  in  Unity  the  soul  is  saved. 

And  now,  again,  let  us  look  at  this  more  carefully  in 
its  several  parts.  The  end  of  the  human  salvation  is 
**  access  to  the  Father."  That  is  the  first  truth  of  our 
religion  —  that  the  source  of  all  is  meant  to  be  the  end  of 
all,  that  as  we  all  came  forth  from  a  divine  Creator,  so  it 
is  into  divinity  that  we  are  to  return  and  to  find  our  final 
rest  and  satisfaction,  not  in  ourselves,  nor  in  one  another, 
but  in  the  omnipotence,  the  omniscience,  the  perfectness, 
and  the  love  of  God.  Now  we  are  very  apt  to  take  it 
for  granted,  that  however  we  may  differ  in  our  defini- 
tions and  our  belief  of  the  deity  of  the  Son  and  of  the 
Holy  Spirit,  we  are  all  at  one,  there  can  be  and  there  is 
no  hesitation,  about  the  deity  of  the  Father.  God  is  di- 
vine.  God  is  God.  And  no  doubt  we  do  all  assent  in 
words  to  such  a  belief  ;  but  when  we  think  what  we 
mean  by  that  word  God  ;  when  we  remember  what  we 
mean  by  "  Father,"  namely,  the  first  source  and  the  final 
satisfaction  of  a  dependent  nature  ;  and  then  when  we 
look  around  and  see  such  multitudes  of  people  living  as 
if  there  were  no  higher  source  for  their  being  than  acci- 
dent, and  no  higher  satisfaction  for  their  being  than 
selfishness,  do  we  not  feel  that  there  is  need  of  a  con- 
tinual and  most  earnest  preaching  by  word  and  act,  from 
every  pulpit  of  influence  to  which  we  can  mount,  of  the 
divinity  of  the  Father.  Why,  take  a  man  who  is  utterly 
absorbed  in  the  business  of  this  world.  How  eager  he  is , 
his  hands  are  knoi'.king  at  every  door ;  his  voice  is  crying 
out  for  admittance  into  every  secret  place  and  treasure- 
house  ;  he  is  all  earnestness  and  restlessness.     He  is  try- 


A   TBINITY-SUNDAY  SERMON.  285 

ing  to  come  to  something,  trying  to  get  access,  and  to 
what  ?  To  the  best  and  richest  of  that  earthly  struct- 
ure from  which  his  life  seems  to  himself  to  have  issued. 
Counting  himself  the  child  of  this  world,  he  is  giving 
himself  up  with  a  filial  devotion  to  his  father.  He  is  the 
product  in  his  tastes  and  his  capacities  of  this  social  and 
commercial  machinery  which  seems  to  be  the  mill  out  of 
which  men's  characters  are  turned.  It  is  the  society  and 
the  business  of  the  world  that  have  made  him  what  he  is, 
and  so  he  gives  up  all  that  he  is  to  the  society  or  the 
business  that  created  him.  The  source  of  life  and  the 
satisfaction  of  life — think  how  many  of  us  look  for  neither 
of  them  any  farther  back  or  any  farther  on  than  this 
routine  in  which  we  live.  We  devote  ourselves  to  it ; 
we  deck  it  with  all  the  graces  we  can  bestow  upon  it, 
because  there  is  no  higher  fatherhood  present  to  our 
thoughts,  because  we  know  no  loftier  God.  Now  to 
such  a  man  what  is  the  first  revelation  that  you  want  to 
•nake.  Is  it  not  the  divinity  of  the  Father.  Remember 
tdat  wonderful  passage  in  the  story  of  the  Passover, 
where  Jesus,  with  His  agony  before  Him,  is  just  rising  to 
work  His  homely  parable  of  washing  the  disciples'  feet. 
And  the  description  of  the  act  is  this :  "  Jesus  knowing 
that  He  was  come  from  God  and  went  to  God,  riseth 
from  supper  and  laid  aside  His  garments,  and  took  a  towel 
and  girded  Himself."  That  was  the  key  to  all  His  life ; 
the  spring  of  every  action.  "  Knowing  that  he  came  from 
God  and  went  to  God,"  knowing,  that  is,  that  God  waa 
His  Father,  the  source  and  the  satisfaction  of  His  life. 
And  that  same  knowledge  which  Christ  had,  you  would 
want  your  friend  to  have.  Does  it  seem  as  if  no  man 
could  escape  it?     Does  it  seem  as  if  the  Divine  Father 


236  k  TRINITY-SUNDAY   SERMON. 

hood  were  the  patent  fact  of  all  creation  ?  As  if  Nature 
uttered  it  in  all  her  voices,  forever  telling  ua  how  we 
came  out  from  the  centre  of  all  life  by  the  beauty  and 
the  majesty  and  the  blessing  with  which  she  bears  wit- 
ness of  Him  to  our  hearts  ?  Does  it  seem  as  if  those 
hearts  themselves,  like  lost  children,  claimed  their  own 
fathex  and  would  not  be  satisfied  with  any  other?  These 
voices  are  not  fancies.  They  are  real.  But  the  clear  fact 
remains  that  multitudes  of  men  do  go  through  life  and 
only  in  the  dimmest  tones  hear  either  nature  or  their  own 
hearts  claiming  God.  To  such  the  truth  must  be  uttered 
from  some  teaching  of  experience  or  doctrine.  They 
must  be  told  ;  we  must  tell  them,  by  any  influence  that 
we  can  bring  to  bear  upon  them,  that  the  true  end  of 
their  life  is  divine.  Let  us  not  think  that  it  is  only  the 
divine  Son  and  the  divine  Comforter  that  we  have  to 
preach.  With  these  men  all  about  us  realizing  St.  Paul's 
description,  "  Whose  end  is  destruction,  whose  God  is 
their  belly,"  surely  we  need  to  preach  the  divinity  of  the 
Father ;  the  divinity  of  the  end  of  life.  The  divinity  of 
the*  Father  needs  assertion  first  of  all.  Let  men  once  feel 
it,  and  then  nature  and  their  own  hearts  will  come  in 
with  their  sweet  and  solemn  confirmations  of  it.  But 
nature  and  the  human  heart  do  not  teach  it  of  them- 
selves. The  truest  teaching  of  it  must  come  from  souls 
that  are  always  going  in  and  out  before  the  divine 
Fatherhood  themselves.  By  the  sight  of  such  souls  others 
must  come  to  seek  the  satisfaction  that  comes  only  from 
a  divine  end  of  life,  —  must  come  to  crave  access  to  the 
Father.  So  we  believe  and  so  we  tempt  other  men  to 
believe  in  God  the  Father. 

2.  This  is  the  divinity  of  the  end.     We  come  from 


A   TRINITY-SUNDAY   SEBMON.  237 

God  aiLd  we  go  to  God.  And  now  pass  to  the  divinity 
of  the  method.  "  Through  Jesus  Christ.'  Man  is  sep- 
arated from  God.  That  fact,  testified  to  by  broken  as- 
sociations, by  alienated  affections,  by  conflicting  wills, 
stands  written  in  the  whole  history  of  our  race.  And 
equally  clear  is  it  to  him  who  reads  the  Gospels  and  en- 
ters into  sympathy  with  their  wonderful  Person,  that  in 
Him,  in  Jesus  of  Nazareth,  appeared  the  Mediator  by 
whom  was  to  be  the  Atonement.  His  was  the  life  and 
nature  which,  standing  between  the  Godhood  and  the 
manhood,  was  to  bridge  the  gulf  and  make  the  firm 
bright  road,  over  which  blessing  and  prayer  might  pass 
and  repass  with  confident  golden  feet  forever.  And  then 
the  question  is,  —  and  when  we  ask  it  thus  it  becomes  so 
much  more  than  a  dry  problem  of  theology ;  it  is  a  ques- 
tion for  live  anxious  men  to  ask  with  faces  full  of  eager- 
ness, —  out  of  which  nature  came  that  Mediator  ?  Out 
of  which  side  of  the  chasm  sprang  the  bridge  leaping 
forth  towards  the  other  ?  Evidently  on  both  sides  that 
bridge  is  bedded  deep  and  clings  with  a  tenacity  which 
?hows  how  it  belongs  there.  He  is  both  human  and  di- 
vine. But  from  which  side  did  the  bridge  spring  ?  Who 
moved  toward  the  reconciliation  ?  Was  it  some  towering 
man  who,  growing  beyond  his  brothers,  overlooked  the 
battlements  of  heaven,  and  saw  the  place  in  the  divine 
heart  where  man  belonged,  and  then  came  back  and  bade 
his  brethren  follow  him,  and  led  them  on  with  him  into 
the  home  of  a  father  who,  reluctant  or  forgetful,  sat 
without  effort  till  his  children  found  their  way  to  him  ? 
It  is  the  most  precious  part  of  our  belief  that  it  was  with 
God  that  the  activity  began.  It  is  the  very  soul  of  the 
Gospel,  as  I  read  it,  that  the  Father's  heart,  sitting  above 


'J-oH  A   TRINITY -SUNDAY   SERMON. 

d8  in  His  holiness,  yearned  for  us  as  we  lay  down  here 
in  our  sin.  And  when  there  was  no  man  to  make  an  in 
tercession,  He  sent  His  Son  to  tell  us  of  His  love,  to  liv« 
with  us,  to  die  for  us,  to  lay  His  life  like  a  strong  bridge 
out  from  the  divine  side  of  existence,  over  which  wi 
might  walk,  fearfully  but  safely,  back  into  the  divinity 
w^here  we  belonged.  Through  Him  we  have  access  to 
the  Father.  As  the  end  was  divine  so  the  method  is  di- 
vine. As  it  is  to  God  that  we  come,  so  it  is  God  who 
brings  us  there.  I  can  think  nothing  else  without  dis 
honoring  the  tireless,  quenchless,  love  of  God. 

Analogies,  I  know,  are  very  imperfect  and  often  very 
deceptive,  when  they  try  to  illustrate  the  highest  things. 
But  is  it  not  as  if  a  great  strong  nation,  too  strong  to  be 
jealous,  strong  enough  to  magnanimously  pity  and  for- 
give, had  to  deal  with  a  colony  of  rebels  whom  it  really 
desired  to  win  back  again  to  itself  ?  They  are  of  its  own 
stock,  but  they  have  lost  their  allegiance  and  are  suffer- 
ing the  sorrows  and  privations  of  being  cut  off  from  their 
fatherland  and  living  in  rebellion.  That  fatherland 
might  send  its  embassy  to  tempt  them  home  ;  and,  if  it 
did,  whom  would  it  choose  to  send  ?  Would  it  not  take 
of  itself  its  messenger  ?  The  embassy  that  is  sent  is  of 
the  country  that  sends  it.  That  is  its  value,  that  is  its 
influence.  The  fatherland  would  choose  its  choicest  son, 
taking  him  from  nearest  to  its  heart,  and  say.  Go  and 
show  them  what  I  am,  how  loving  and  how  ready  to  for- 
give, for  you  are  I  and  you  can  show  them.  Such  was 
the  mission  of  the  Messiah.  Do  you  not  remember  His 
own  parable  ?  One  day  He  told  His  hearers  in  the  old 
temple  how  the  master  of  the  vineyard  sent  out  his  ser- 
vants one  after  another  to  his  rebellious  husbandmen,  but 


A   TRINITY -SUNDAY  SERMON.  239 

last  of  all  he  sent  unto  them  his  son.  What  was  the  dif- 
ference ?  It  was  Himself  that  He  sent  then.  The  am- 
bassador was  of  the  very  land  that  sent  Him,  "  God  of 
God,  Light  of  Light,  very  God  of  very  God,  begotten,  not 
made,  being  of  one  substance  with  the  Father."  How 
full  the  words  of  the  old  creed  are  of  rich  meaning.  How 
the  heat  of  the  hot  controversy  in  which  they  were  bom 
has  passed  out  of  them,  and  they  are  deep  and  clear  and 
cool  as  wells  that  draw  their  water  of  refreshment  from 
the  unheated  centre  of  the  eternal  rock.  My  friend  says 
God  sends  Christ  into  the  world  and  therefore  Christ  is 
not  God.  I  cannot  see  it  so.  It  seems  to  me  just  other- 
wise. God  sends  Christ  just  because  Christ  is  God.  He 
sends  Himself.  His  sending  is  a  coming.  The  ambas- 
sador, the  army  is  of  the  very  most  precious  substance  of 
the  country  that  dispatches  it.  This  is  the  meaning  of 
that  constant  title  of  our  Master.  He  is  the  Son  of  God. 
Think  of  it.  Does  not  "  Son  "  mean  just  this  which  the 
church's  faith,  with  the  best  words  that  it  could  find,  has 
labored  to  express,  "  Two  persons  and  one  substance." 
That  is  the  Father  and  the  Child.  Separate  personality 
but  one  nature.  Unity  and  distinctness  both,  but  the 
unity  as  true  a  fact  as  the  distinctness.  Nay,  the  unity 
the  fact  which  made  the  essence  of  His  mission,  the  fact 
which  made  Him  the  true,  fit,  only  perfect  messenger  of 
God  and  Saviour  of  the  world. 

This  is  the  glory  of  the  Incarnation.  That  embassy 
out  of  the  fatherland  comes  to  the  rebel  colony  and  lives 
there.  It  enters  into  the  rude  huts  which  the  degenerate 
eolonists  have  built,  and  makes  itself  a  home  in  them.  It 
ia  a  stranger  there,  and  yet  the  men  of  whom  it  is  com- 
|KJsed  find  in  these  half -savage  huts  memories  of  the  com« 


240  A  TRINITY-SUNDAY   SERMON. 

mon  home  from  which  these  colonists  as  wtill  as  they  came 
^orth  at  first.  They  are  not  wholly  strangers.  Some- 
thing about  the  shape  of  the  huts  reminds  them  of  th» 
palaces  at  home,  and  here  and  there  an  iron  instrument 
with  blunted  edge,  or  a  household  utensil  put  to  some  un- 
seemly use,  makes  them  remember  that  these  rebels  they 
have  come  to  reconcile  are  originally  brethren  of  theirs. 
And  so  the  Mediator  came  to  us,  and  every  day  of  all  the 
life  in  Palestine  bore  witness  both  to  the  strangeness  and 
to  the  familiarness  with  which  He  lived  among  us.  The 
events  and  habits  of  the  Saviour's  career  on  earth  seem 
like  the  huts  of  savagedom  inhabited  by  the  children  of 
civilization.  And  so  it  is  with  the  presence  of  Christ 
always.  His  unseen  presence  in  the  institutions  of  the 
world  and  in  the  hearts  of  men.  He  is  always  glorify- 
ing them  and  shaming  them  at  once,  showing  at  once 
their  natural  capacity  and  their  degenerate  condition.  It 
does  seem  to  me  that  the  great  beauty  of  the  old  belief 
in  the  divinity  of  Christ  is  the  faith  in  the  capacity  of 
manhood  which  it  implies.  It  believes  that  man  is  of  so 
godlike  a  nature  that  he  can  hold  God,  that  God  can  be 
incarnated  in  him.  Our  sense  of  man's  capacity  is  low. 
We  do  not  think  that  God  could  dwell  in  the  temple  of 
a  life  like  ours.  But  was  not  that  just  what  He  came  to 
teach  us  that  He  could  do  ?  He  teaches  it  to  us  by  the 
rich  experience  of  His  Spirit  dwelling  in  our  spirits,  but 
before  that  He  taught  it  to  us  by  the  Word  made  flesh. 
A  brute  race  could  have  seen  no  incarnation.  God  could 
tare  for  them  and  feed  them,  but  He  could  not  come  into 
thera,  live  in  them.  But  man  is  better.  "  Because  we 
ftre  sons,  God  has  sent  the  spirit  of  His  Son  into  our 
hearts."     Because  we  are  sons,  His  Son  Himself  oonld 


A   TRINITY-SUNDAY  SERMON.  241 

take  oui  nature  upon  Him.  The  more  truly  we  believe 
in  the  Incarnate  Deity,  the  more  devoutly  we  must  be- 
lieve in  the  essential  glory  of  humanity,  the  more  ear- 
nestly we  must  struggle  to  keep  the  purity  and  integrity 
and  largeness  of  our  own  human  life,  and  to  help  our 
brethren  to  keep  theirs.  It  is  because  the  divine  can 
dwell  in  us  that  we  may  have  access  to  divinity.  "We 
and  they  must,  through  the  divine  method,  come  to  the 
divine  end  where  we  belong,  through  God  the  Son  to  God 
the  Father. 

3.  And  now  turn  to  the  point  that  still  remains.     We 
have  spoken  of  the  end  ard  of  the  method  ;  but  no  true 
act  is  perfect  unless  the  power  by  which  it  works  is  wor- 
thy of  the  method  through  wbich  and  the  end  to  which 
it  proceeds.     The  power  of  the  act  of  man's  salvation 
is  the  Holy  Spirit.     "  Through  Christ  Jesus  we  all  have 
access  by  one  Spirit  unto  the  Father."     What  do  we 
mean  by  the  Holy  Spirit  being  the  power  of  salvation  ? 
I  think  we  are  often  deluded  and  misled  by  carrying  out 
too  far  some  of  the  figurative  forms  in  which  the  Bible 
and  the  religious  experience  of  men  express  the  saving  of 
the  soul.     For  instance,  salvation  is  described  as  the  lift- 
ing of  the  soul  out  of  a  pit  and  putting  it  upon  a  pinnacle, 
or  on  a  safe  high  platform  of  grace.     The  figure  is  strong 
and  clear.     Nothing  can  overstate  the  utter  dependence 
of  the  soul  on  God  for  its  deliverance ;  but  if  we  let  the 
figure  leave  in  our  minds  an  impression  of  the  human 
soul  as  a  dead,  passive  thing,  to  be  lifted  from  one  place 
to  the  other  like  a  torpid  log  that  makes  no  effort  of  its 
own  either  for  cooperation  or  resistance,  then  the  figure 
has  misled  us.     The  soul  is  a  live  thing.     Everything 
that  is  done  with  it  must  be  done  in  and  through  its  own 
14 


242  A   TRINITT-SUNDAT   SERMON. 

essential  lile.  If  a  soul  is  saved,  it  must  be  ty  the  salva* 
tion,  the  sanctification  of  its  essential  life  ;  if  a  soul  is  lost, 
it  must  be  by  perdition  of  its  life,  by  the  degradation  of 
its  affections  and  desires  and  hopes.  Let  there  be  noth 
ing  merely  mechanical  in  the  conception  of  the  way  God 
treats  these  souls  of  ours.  He  works  upon  them  in  the 
vitality  of  thought,  passion,  and  will  that  He  put  into 
them.  And  so  when  a  soul  comes  to  the  Father  through 
the  Saviour,  its  whole  essential  vitality  moves  in  the  act. 
With  those  affections  with  which  it  has  loved  the  world, 
it  loves  its  Lord.  With  that  same  will  with  which  it 
chose  iniquity,  it  chooses  now  holiness  and  heaven.  The 
whole  capacity  of  life  was  there.  Now  the  power  of  Life 
has  entered  in  and  is  using  it.  And  just  this  sometimes 
hides  from  us  the  essentially  divine  character  of  the  new 
spiritual  life.  It  seems  as  if  the  Christian  had  simply 
chosen  to  love  God  instead  of  loving  his  business ;  but  as 
he  goes  on  and  finds  what  this  new  love  of  God  really 
means,  he  finds  what  it  is  that  has  happened.  He  under- 
stands what  is  the  nature  of  the  change,  though  its  in- 
finiteness  enlarges  to  Him  every  day.  The  capacities  of 
faith  and  love  and  holiness  have  been  taken  possession 
of  and  filled  out  to  their  completeness  by  the  very  Spirit 
of  holiness  and  love  and  faith  which  they  were  made  to 
hold,  but  which  is  greater  than  themselves.  The  divine 
power  has  taken  possession  of  the  soul's  capacities,  and, 
although  it  may  seem  at  first  as  if  the  soul  itself  had 
oiiginated  this  new  movement  to  God  through  Christ, 
just  as  it  may  seem  to  the  child  at  first  as  if  his  body  did 
all  these  spiritual  acts  which  the  spirit  does  within  it, 
yet,  by  and  by,  the  conviction  clears  itself,  and  grows 
clearer  and  clearer  constantly,  that  it  is  not  the  soul  e 


A  TRINITY-SUNDAY   SERMON.  249 

Simple  ability  to  be  religious  that  has  made  it  religious 
but  that  God  by  direct  visitation  has  occupied  that  abil 
ity  and  is  drawing  the  soul  to  Himself  ;  just  as  the  child 
comes  to  distinguish  between  the  body's  mere  ability  to 
answer  the  mind's  requirements,  and  the  mind  itself 
which  uses  the  body  as  the  servant  of  its  needs. 

When  this  experience  is  reached,  then  see  what  God- 
hood  the  soul  has  come  to  recognize  in  the  world.  First, 
there  is  the  Creative  Deity  from  which  it  sprang,  and  to 
which  it  is  struggling  to  return — the  divine  End,  God 
the  Father.  Then  there  is  the  Incarnate  Deity,  which 
makes  that  return  possible  by  the  exhibition  of  God's 
love,  —  the  divine  method,  God  the  Son  ;  and  then  there 
is  this  Infused  Deity,  this  divine  energy  in  the  soul  itself, 
taking  its  capacities  and  setting  them  homeward  to  the 
Father  —  the  divine  Power  of  Salvation,  God  the  Holy 
Spirit.  To  the  Father,  through  the  Son,  by  the  Spirit. 
If  we  recur  a  moment  to  the  figure  which  we  used  a 
while  ago ;  God  is  the  divine  Fatherland  of  the  human 
Boul  ;  Christ  is  like  the  embassy,  part  and  parcel  of 
that  Fatherland,  which  comes  out  to  win  it  back  from 
its  rebellion  ;  and  the  Holy  Spirit  is  the  Fatherland 
wakened  in  the  rebellious  colony's  own  soul.  He  is  the 
newly-living  loyalty.  When  the  colony  comes  back,  the 
power  that  brings  it  is  the  Fatherland  in  it  seeking  its 
own.  So  when  the  soul  comes  back  to  God,  it  is  God  in 
the  soul  that  brings  it.  So  we  believe  in  the  divine 
power,  one  with  the  divine  method  and  the  divine  end, 
in  God  the  Spirit  one  with  the  Father  and  the  Son. 

This  appears  to  me  the  truth  of  the  Deity  as  it  relates 
to  us.  I  say  again,  "as  it  relates  to  us."  What  it  may 
be  in  itself ;   how  Father,  Son,  and   Spirit  meet  in  tha 


244  A   TRINITY-SUNDAY   SERMON. 

perfect  Godhood  ;  what  infini'e  truth  more  there  may, 
there  must,  be  in  that  Godhood,  no  man  can  dare  to 
guess.  But,  to  us,  God  is  the  end,  the  method,  and 
the  power  of  salvation ;  so  He  is  Father,  Son,  and  Holy 
Spirit.  It  is  ii  the  perfect  harmony  of  these  sacred  per- 
sonalities that  the  precious  unity  of  the  Deity  consists. 
I  look  at  the  theologies,  and  so  often  it  seems  as  if  the 
harmony  of  Father,  Son,  and  Spirit  had  been  lost,  both 
by  those  that  own  and  by  those  that  disown  the  Trinity. 
One  theology  makes  the  Father  hard  and  cruel,  longings 
as  it  were,  for  man's  punishment,  extorting  from  the  Son 
the  last  drop  of  life-blood  which  man's  sin  had  incurred 
as  penalty.  Another  theology  makes  the  Son  merely 
one  of  the  multitude  of  sinning  men,  with  somewhat 
bolder  aspirations  laying  hold  on  a  forgiveness  which 
God  might  give  but  which  no  mortal  might  assume. 
Still  another  theology  can  find  no  God  in  the  human 
heart  at  all  ;  merely  a  fermentation  of  human  nature  is 
this  desire  after  goodness,  this  reaching  out  towards  Di- 
vinity. The  end  is  not  worthy  of  the  method.  I  do  not 
want  to  come  to  such  a  Father  as  some  of  the  theologians 
have  painted.  Or  the  method  is  not  worthy  of  the  end. 
No  man  could  come  to  the  perfect  God  through  such  a 
Jesus  as  some  men  have  described.  Or  the  power  is  too 
weak  for  both  ;  and  all  that  Christ  has  done  lies  useless, 
and  all  the  Father's  welcome  waits  in  vain  for  the  soul 
that  has  in  it  no  Holy  Ghost.  But  let  each  be  real,  and 
each  be  worthy  of  the  others,  and  the  salvation  is  com- 
plete. But  each  cannot  be  worthy  of  the  others  unless 
each  is  perfect.  But  each  cannot  be  perfect,  unless  each 
is  Divine ;  that  is  our  faith  in  the  Trinity,  —  three  Per 
sons  and  one  God. 


A  TBmiTY-SUNDAY  SERMON.  245 

We  talk  here  to-day  about  the  doctrine  of  the  Triu.ty, 
our  best  conception  and  account  of  God.  But  does  it  not 
sometimes  come  over  our  minds,  What  shall  we  think  of 
all  this  when  we  come  into  that  world  where  we  shall 
see  God  with  unclouded  vision,  standing  close  to  His 
mercy-seat  and  to  His  throne?  Shall  we  still  hold  our 
doctrine  of  the  Trinity  ?  Will  these  formulas  in  which 
we  have  glibly  argued  to  one  another  about  God,  as  "we 
talked  in  our  churches  and  our  parlors  here,  will  they 
suffice  to  express  that  majesty  and  love  which  then  shall 
pour  in  on  the  open  soul  conclusive  witness  of  itself? 
Surely  we  must  not  hope  it.  Surely  our  formulas  will 
burst,  and  prove  too  small  and  thin  for  that  stupendous 
self-revelation  of  the  Deity.  We  shall  see,  I  believe,  that 
our  statements  here  were  to  the  knowledge  that  will  flood 
our  eager  apprehension  there  only  what  the  child's  crude 
Knowledge  of  his  father  is  to  the  full-grown  son's  com- 
prehension of  the  generous  and  thoughtful  nature  under 
whose  shadow  and  in  whose  light  he  lives.  But  just  as 
the  son,  much  as  he  learns  about  his  father,  never  out- 
grows, however  he  may  refine  and  enlarge,  his  first  con- 
ception of  the  essential  qualities  of  the  parental  life,  its 
truth  and  love  and  justice,  so  to  the  soul  in  heaven, 
learning  more  and  more  forever  of  the  God  of  its  salva- 
tion, this  shall  become  clearer  and  clearer  always :  that 
it  was  saved  by  a  divine  power,  through  a  divine  method, 
to  a  divine  end ;  into  the  heart  of  the  Father,  through 
the  brotherhood  of  the  Son,  urged  by  the  inspiring  Spirit. 
That  will  be  the  everlasting  salvation,  real  to  the  soul 
forever,  whatever  else  may  change.  That  will  be  the 
reality  by  which  we  shall  know  that  the  glory  we  have 
reached  is  the  same  for  which  we  longed  and  prayed 


246  A   TRINITY-SUNDAY   SERMON. 

and  struggled  when  we  were  on  the  earth,  in  these  deai 
old  days  to  which  we  shall  look  back  with  undying  affec- 
tion from  eternity. 

Let  us  keep  the  faith  of  the  Trinity.  I  have  spokei 
all  in  vain  to-day,  unless  you  know  now  that  I  do  not 
mean  by  such  an  exhortation,  "  Let  us  cling  to  an  idea, 
and  die  for  the  holding  to  a  precious  word."  Let  us  do 
that,  if  need  be  ;  but  far  above  that,  let  us  seek  to  come 
to  the  highest,  through  the  highest,  by  the  highest.  Let 
the  end  and  the  method  and  the  power  of  our  life  be 
all  divine.  If  our  hearts  are  set  on  that,  Jesus  will  ac- 
cept us  for  His  disciples  ;  all  that  He  promised  to  do  for 
those  who  trusted  Him,  He  will  do  for  us.  He  will  show 
us  the  Father  ;  He  will  send  us  the  Comforter ;  nay, 
what  can  He  do,  or  what  can  we  ask  that  will  outgo  the 
strong  and  sweet  assurance  of  the  promise  which  we  have 
been  studying  to-day :  Through  Him  we  shall  have  wsy 
OBfiS  by  one  Spirit  unto  the  Father. 


xrv. 

IS  IT  U 

"  Aad  as  they  did  eat,  Jesns  said,  Yerilj  I  say  unto  yoa,  that  sne  ol  yam 
•hall  betray  me.  And  they  were  exceeding  aorrowful,  and  began  e?ery 
one  of  them  to  say  unto  Him,  Lord,  is  it  I  ?  " —  Matt.  xxvi.  21,  22. 

It  was  a  moment  of  dismay  among  the  disciples  of 
Jesus.  Their  Master,  sitting  with  them  at  the  supper, 
had  just  declared  that  one  of  them  should  commit  an  act 
of  the  basest  treachery  and  betray  Him  to  His  enemies. 
There  could  be  no  deed  more  contemptible.  Every  ob- 
ligation of  duty  and  affection  was  violated  by  it.  One 
who  stood  by,  in  the  rude  upper  chamber  where  they  ate 
the  supper,  might  well  have  watched  with  curiosity  to 
Bee  how  these  plain  men  would  take  the  words  of  Jesus. 
Will  they  break  out  in  indignant  remonstrance  ?  Will 
they  fall  to  accusing  one  another  ?  Will  each  draw  back 
from  his  brother  apostle  in  horror  at  the  thought  that 
possibly  that  brother  apostle  is  the  man  who  is  to  do 
this  dreadful  thing  ?  Instead  of  these,  there  is  a  differ- 
ent result  from  either,  and  one  that  certainly  surprises 
us.  Each  man's  anxiety  seems  to  be  turned,  not  towards 
his  brother,  but  towards  himself,  and  you  hear  them  ask- 
ing, one  after  another,  "  Lord,  is  it  I  ? "  "  Lord,  is  it 
I  ?  "  Peter,  Bartholomew,  John,  James,  Thomas,  each 
speaks  for  himself,  and  the  quick  questions  come  pouring 
in  out  of  their  simple  hearts,  "  Lord,  is  it  I  ? "  "  I^ord, 
UitI?" 


248  IS  IT  I? 

Certainly  there  is  something  that  is  strange  in  this, 
These  men  were  genuine.  There  could  not  be  any  af 
fectation  in  their  question.  A  real  live  fear  came  ovei 
them  at  Jesus's  prophecy.  And  it  was  a  good  sign,  no 
doubt,  that  the  first  thought  of  each  of  them  was  about 
the  possibility  of  his  own  sin.  When  a  man  foresees  a 
great  temptation  that  is  coming,  it  is  always  better  that, 
instead  of  turning  to  his  neighbors  and  saying,  as  he 
searches  their  faces,  "  I  wonder  who  will  do  this  wicked 
thing,"  he  should  turn  to  himself  and  say,  "  Is  it  possi- 
ble that  I  am  the  man  who  will  do  it  ? "  When  the 
wind  is  rising  it  is  good  for  each  ship  at  sea  to  look  to 
its  own  ropes  and  sails,  and  not  stand  gazing  to  see  how 
ready  the  other  ships  are  to  meet  it.  We  all  feel  that 
we  would  rather  hear  a  man  asking  about  himself  ans 
iously  than  to  see  him  so  sure  of  himself  that  the  ques- 
tion never  occurred  to  him.  We  should  be  surer  of  his 
standing  firm  if  we  saw  that  he  knew  he  was  in  danger 
of  a  fall.  Now,  all  this  is  illustrated  in  Christ's  disci- 
ples. It  must  have  been  that  their  life  with  Him  had 
deepened  the  sense  of  the  mystery  of  their  lives.  They 
had  seen  themselves,  in  their  intercourse  with  Him,  as 
capable  of  much  more  profound  and  various  spiritual  ex- 
perience than  they  had  thought  possible  before.  And 
this  possible  life,  this  possible  experience,  had  run  in 
both  directions,  up  and  down.  They  had  recognized  a 
before  unknown  capacity  for  holiness,  and  they  had  seen 
also  a  before  unknown  power  of  wickedness.  Their  slug^ 
gishness  had  been  broken  up,  and  they  had  seen  that 
they  were  capable  A  divine  thiugs.  Their  self-satisfied 
pride  had  been  broken  up,  and  they  had  seen  that  they 
were  capable  of  brutal  things.     Heaven  and  hell  had 


IS  IT  I?  249 

opened  above  their  heads  and  under  their  feet.  They 
had  not  thought  it  incredible  when  Christ  said,  "  I  go 
to  prepare  a  place  for  you,  and  I  will  come  again  and 
receive  you  to  myself,"  and  now  they  did  not  think  it 
incredible  when  He  said,  "  One  of  you  shall  betray  me.'* 
The  life  with  Christ  had  melted  the  ice  in  which  they 
had  been  frozen,  and  they  felt  it  in  them  either  to  rise 
to  the  sky  or  to  sink  into  the  depths.  That  was  and  that 
always  is  Christ's  revelation  of  the  possibilities  of  life. 
To  one  who  really  lives  with  Him  the  heights  above 
and  the  depths  below  both  grow  more  profound.  A  new 
goodness  and  a  new  badness  become  possible.  He  makes 
men  know  that  they  are  the  children  of  God,  and  that 
as  God's  children  they  have  a  chance  to  be  far  better  or 
far  worse  than  they  could  be  when  they  thought  them- 
selves only  His  slaves.  All  this  Christ  did  for  those  first 
disciples  and  the  same  change  of  life,  the  same  deepen- 
ing of  its  possibilities,  has  come  to  all  who  have  really 
lived  with  Him  since  then. 

There  are  times  in  the  lives  of  all  of  us,  I  think,  when 
that  comeb  to  us  which  came  here  to  Christ's  disciples. 
Of  such  times  and  their  position  in  our  Kves  and  their 
effect  upon  our  lives  let  us  speak  this  morning.  Be- 
neath us  as  beneath  them  the  worse  possibilities  of  our 
nature  sometimes  reveal  themselves.  There  are  timea 
when  it  seems  to  us  not  impossible  that  we  should  com- 
mit very  great  sins.  Just  as  there  are  some  times  when 
we  catch  sight  of  the  possibility  of  holiness  which  lies 
above  us,  and  comprehend  with  rapturous  hope  how  good 
it  is  in  our  power  to  become;  so  there  are  these  other 
times  when  the  mysteriousness  of  our  nature  opens  its 
other  side,  and  the  crimes  and  vices,  at  which  we  and 


250  IS  IT  I? 

all  men  tremble,  seem  to  be  not  wholly  impossible  to  ua. 
Such  times  are  not  our  worst  times  certainly.  Often 
they  are  times  which,  by  their  very  sense  of  danger,  are 
the  safest  and  strongest  of  our  lives.  But  they  are  often 
moments  that  dismay  us.  They  come  in  upon  our  self- 
complacency  and  shock  it  with  their  ominous  presence, 
these  moments  when  we  suspect  ourselves  and  see  that 
inevitably  to  the  power  of  being  very  good  if  we  will,  is 
linked  the  other  power  of  being  very  bad  if  we  will,  too. 
Let  us  consider  what  some  of  the  times  are  which  waken 
this  darker  self-consciousness,  this  sense  of  our  own  pos- 
sibilities of  sin. 

One  of  them  is  the  time  when  we  see  deep  and  fla- 
grant sin  in  some  other  man.  When  some  great  crime  is 
done,  when  through  the  community  there  runs  the  story 
of  some  frightful  cruelty,  or  drei.  •.  ^nl  fraud,  I  think  that 
almost  all  of  us  are  conscious  of  a  strange  mixture  of 
two  emotions,  one  of  horror  and  the  other  of  a  terrible 
^familiarity.  The  act  is  repugnant  to  all  our  conscien- 
tiousness, but  the  powers  that  did  the  act,  and  the  mo- 
tives that  persuaded  the  doing  of  it,  are  powers  which  we 
possess  and  motives  which  we  have  felt.  They  are  hu- 
man powers  and  human  motives.  It  is  a  human  act.  L 
we  could  watch  the  sinning  of  another  race  with  a  wholly 
different  nature,  I  think  that  it  would  stir  no  such  self- 
consciousness.  If  we  could  stand  by  and  see  the  wicked* 
ness  of  fiends  or  fallen  angels,  it  might  excite  our  hatred, 
our  disgust,  but  it  would  make  no  such  deep  question- 
ings as  come  when  we  recognize  our  own  humanity  in 
the  sinning  man,  and  find  our  nature  bearing  witness 
that  it  has  in  it  the  same  powers  by  which  he  has  been 
■o  wicked.     A  being  of  a  higher  race  might  see  our  siB 


lb  IT  I?  261 

and  sonow  -with  pity,  with  pain,  with  wonder ;  but  the 
pain  would  be  all  free  from  self-reproach,  and  the  wonder 
would  all  exhaust  itself  outside  of  him.  It  would  be  the 
innocent  bewilderment  with  which  I  remember,  in  a  pict- 
ure by  Domenichino  at  Bologna,  an  angel  stands  at  the 
foot  of  the  empty  cross,  and  tries  with  his  finger  one 
of  the  sharp  points  in  the  crown  of  thorns  which  the 
Saviour  had  worn  during  His  passion.  It  is  all  a  sad  in- 
explicable wonder  to  him.  It  appeals  to  no  experience 
of  wickedness  and  woe  in  his  pure  and  angelic  nature. 
But  when  you  or  I  take  the  crown  of  thorns  into  our 
hands  we  know  in  our  own  hearts  the  meanness,  the  jeal- 
ousy, the  hatred  which  it  represents.  The  possible  Jew, 
the  possible  enemy  of  righteousness  and  crucifier  of  the 
Saviour,  stirs  to  self-consciousness  in  us.  When  you  read^ 
the  story  of  yesterday's  defaulter  fleeing  to-day,  an  exile 
and  an  outcast,  or  sitting  gloomily  behind  his  prison 
bars,  it  is  not  with  an  angel's  innocent  wonder  what  a  sin 
hke  his  can  mean ;  it  is  with  the  understanding  of  a  man 
who  has  felt  the  same  temptation  to  which  this  poor^ 
wretch  has  yielded,  that  you  deplore  his  fate.  It  is  al- 
ways the  difference  between  an  angel's  pity  and  a  man'a 
pity.  With  simple  wonder  an  angel  might  walk  through 
our  State  Prison  halls ;  but  a  man  must  walk  there  fuU 
of  humbleness  and  charity ;  for,  as  the  best  man  that 
ever  lived  finds  something  of  common  humanity  in  ua 
which  makes  his  goodness  seem  not  impossible  to  us, 
BO  the  worst  of  men  stirs  by  the  sight  of  his  human  sin 
some  sense  of  what  human  power  of  sinfulness  we  too 
possess. 

2.  Another  of  the  occasions  which  lets  us  see  our  own 
possibility  of  sin,  which  opens  to  us  a  glimp ee  of  how 


252  IS  IT  I? 

wicked  we  might  be,  is  when  we  do  some  small  sin  and 
recognize  the  deep  power  of  sinfulness  by  which  we  do 
it.  The  Bible  is  full  of  this  idea.  Look  at  Adam  with 
the  forbidden  apple.  Is  it  only  that  one  sin  which  terri- 
fies him,  and  makes  him  dread  the  coming  of  God  which 
had  been  once  the  joy  of  the  garden  day?  Is  it  not  that 
pressing  up  behind  that  sin  he  sees  the  long  procession 
of  sins  which  he  and  his  descendants  will  commit  ?  A 
boy  paints  his  first  stumbling,  ill-drawn  picture,  and,  as 
he  gazes  at  it,  he  sees,  already,  the  glowing  canvas  which 
he  is  some  day  to  cover.  It  grows  possible  to  him.  A 
boy  makes  his  first  boyish  bargain,  and  the  trade-im- 
pulse rises  in  him,  and,  already,  he  sees  himself  a  mer- 
chant. It  is  the  same  thing.  A  pure,  honest  boy  cheats 
witl^  his  first  little  timid  fraud,  and  on  the  other  side,  tht 
bad  side  of  him,  the  door  flies  open  and  he  sees  the  possi 
bility  that  he,  too,  should  be  the  swindler  whose  enor- 
mous frauds  make  the  whole  city  tremble.  The  slightest 
crumbling  of  the  earth  under  your  feet  makes  you  aware 
of  the  precipice.  The  least  impurity  makes  you  ready  to 
cry  out,  as  some  image  of  hideous  lust  rises  before  you, 
"  Oh,  is  it  I  ?     Can  I  come  to  that  ?  " 

3.  And  yet  another  occasion  when  we  become  aware 
of  our  own  bad  possibility  is  the  expression  of  any  sus- 
picion about  us  by  another  person.  Perfectly  unwar- 
rantable and  false  we  may  know  the  charge  to  be  which 
13  brought  against  us,  but  the  mere  fastening  of  the  eio 
and  our  name  together,  the  fact  that  any  man  could  men- 
tion the  two  in  the  same  breath,  must  turn  our  eyes  in 
upon  ourselves  and  set  us  to  asking,  *'  Is  it  impossible?" 
"  I  did  not  do  this  thing  indeed.  My  conscience  is  all 
clear.     I  did  not  commit  this  cruelty.     I  did  not  prove 


IS  IT  I?  263 

io  nngrateful  and  treacherous  as  this  charge  would  make 
me.  Perhaps  I  could  not,  perhaps  I  know  I  could  not  do 
this  special  villainy.  But  can  I  blaze  up  into  fiery  indig- 
nation at  men's  daring  to  suspect  me  without  remember- 
ing what  badness  I  am  capable  of.  Can  I  resent  suspi- 
cion as  an  angel  might,  w^ao,  standing  in  the  light  of  God, 
dreaded  and  felt  no  sin  ?  '*  I  think  that  for  you  or  me  to 
find  our  names  linked  to-morrow  in  this  community  with 
some  great  crime,  of  which  we  knew  that  we  were  to- 
tally innocent,  must  stir  the  mystery  of  our  inner  life,  and 
make  us  see  what  capacity  of  sin  is  lying  there.  I  think 
our  disavowal  of  the  sin  that  we  were  charged  with 
would  be  not  boisterously  angry,  but  quiet  and  solemn 
and  humble,  with  a  sense  of  danger  and  a  gratitude  for 
preservation.  1  think  that  ought  to  be  the  influence. 
And  even  the  boisterousness  with  which  some  men  deny 
a  charge  against  their  characters  is  still  a  sign  in  a  worse 
way  of  how  their  conscience  has  been  touched.  Would 
you  want  the  clerk  in  your  store  to  be  charged  with  dis- 
honesty, and  not  go  back  to  his  work,  when  the  charge 
had  been  disproved,  with  a  deepened  perception  of  temp- 
tation, and  a  quickened  watchfulness  and  care  ? 

4.  Or  yet  again.  By  a  strange  but  very  natural  proc- 
ess, the  same  result  often  comes  from  just  the  opposite 
cause.  Not  merely  when  men  suspect  us  and  charge  ua 
with  wrong  doing,  but  when  men  praise  us  and  say  that 
we  are  good,  this  same  recognition  of  how  bad  we  have 
the  power  to  be  often  arises.  Suppose  that  you  are  going 
on  in  a  dull  and  lifeless  way,  not  conscious  of  anything 
about  yourself  except  just  the  practical  powers  by  which 
you  do  your  work  from  day  to  day.  You  have  forgotten 
the   mystery  of  your  spiritual  life.     You  have   grown 


254  IS  IT  I? 

wholly  u  naware  of  the  moral  extremes  whose  folded  capao 
ities  are  in  you.  You  never  think  how  wicked  you  may 
be,  or  how  good  you  may  be.  "  Take  thine  ease,  eat, 
drink,  and  be  merry."  You  have  come  to  that.  And 
then  suppose  that  some  fellow-being,  under  the  influence 
of  some  delusion,  begins  to  praise  you.  He  takes  some 
little  thing  which  you  have  done ;  he  conceives  for  it 
lofty  motives  which  you  never  dreamed  of ;  he  purifies 
it  of  all  selfishness  ;  he  holds  it  up  and  says,  "  See  what 
a  true  deep  spiritual  man  it  must  have  been  that  did  this 
thing."  What  is  in  your  heart  as  you  see  your  poor 
little  deed  held  up  above  the  world,  shining  with  the  light 
that  this  friend's  imagination  has  thrown  into  it,  and 
with  the  eyes  of  all  men  fastened  upon  it  ?  Is  there  no 
shame  ?  You  must  be  a  very  poor  sort  of  man  if  there 
is  not.  Is  there  no  breaking  up  of  the  dead  equilibrium 
of  self-content  ?  Is  it  not  as  if  the  net  in  which  a  bird 
had  been  held,  with  its  wings  helpless  and  useless,  were 
torn  to  pieces,  and  the  bird  had  either  to  fall  to  the 
ground  or  to  fly  to  the  sky.  Its  danger  and  its  chance 
were  revealed  to  it  together.  A  man  comes  up  to  our 
life  and  looking  round  upon  the  crowd  of  our  fellow-men, 
he  says,  "  See,  I  will  strike  the  life  of  this  brother  of  ours 
and  you  shall  hear  how  true  it  rings."  He  does  strike 
it,  and  it  does  seem  to  them  to  ring  true,  and  they  shout 
their  applause  ;  but  we  whose  life  is  struck  feel  running 
all  through  us  at  the  stroke  the  sense  of  hoUowness.  Our 
goai  smks  as  we  hear  the  praises.  They  start  desire  but 
they  reveal  weakness.  No  true  man  is  ever  so  humble 
and  so  afraid  of  himself  as  when  other  men  are  praising 
him  most  loudly. 

5.  I  must  name  one  time  n  ore.     Is  it  not  true  that 


IS  IT  I?  255 

every  temptation  which  comes  to  us,  however  bravely 
and  successfully  it  may  be  resisted,  opens  to  us  the  sight 
of  some  of  our  human  capacity  of  sin.  To  resist  temp- 
tation is  never,  I  think,  an  exhilarating  experience.  W 
remember  too  vividly  how  near  we  came  to  yielding.  W« 
come  out  of  battle  thankful  that  we  are  safe  and  sound, 
bnt  the  night  after  the  battle  is  not  a  light-hearted  or 
jovial  time.  There  are  too  many  vacant  places  in  the 
tent  which  only  yesterday  were  full.  The  shriek  of  the 
bullet  and  the  sight  of  the  bursting  shell  are  still  too 
fresh  and  vivid.  We  are  too  much  surprised  to  find  that 
we  are  safe.  Our  escape  has  been  too  narrow.  Job,  as 
his  wealth  rolls  back  to  him,  takes  it  with  thankful  hands, 
but  he  cannot  laugh  over  it  when  he  remembers  how 
from  the  heights  of  his  misery  he  looked  over  into  the 
possibility  of  cursing  God.  Simeon,  when  the  child 
Christ  is  brought  to  him,  thanks  God  that  he  has  lived 
to  see  the  fulfilment  of  his  hopes  ;  but  he  may  well  have 
remembered  how  often  he  had  been  almost  ready  to  de- 
spair and  give  up  his  long  watch.  Nay,  even  Jesus  Him- 
self, what  shall  we  think  was  the  kind  of  step  with  which 
He  came  down  the  mountain  ?  He  had  seen  Satan.  He 
had  seen  with  what  greedy  and  confident  eyes  Satan 
looked  at  that  humanity  of  his,  as  if  it  were  something 
that  belonged  to  Him.  Nay,  in  His  own  humanity  He 
had  felt  a  treacherous  something,  that  was  ready  to  re- 
spond to  Satan  and  to  own  his  mastery.  Strong  and  vic- 
torious He  came  away.  But  was  there  no  new  solemn 
insight  into  this  humanity  which  He  had  taken  ?  Was 
not  the  Incarnation  more  than  ever  awful  to  the  Incar. 
Qate  One  ?  He,  the  sinless,  had  gone  up  and  looked  over 
fche  edge  into  the  deepest  depths  of  sin.     He  needed  the 


266  IS  IT  I? 

ministry  of  angels,  and  He  surely  came  down  the  moun 
tain  serious  and  sad.  And  so  it  is  with  you,  when  you 
follow  your  Lord  into  that  experience.  It  may  be  that 
you  come  out  by  His  grace  pure  and  thankful,  but  you 
come  out  like  Him,  serious  and  sad,  for  you  have  looked 
down  as  He  looked  into  the  possibility  of  sin.  The  man 
who  dares  to  laugh  at  a  temptation  which  he  has  felt  and 
resisted  is  not  yet  wholly  safe  out  of  its  power. 

I  name  these  times  then  in  which  the  possibility  of  oui 
own  great  wickedness  appears  to  us.  No  doubt  the  list 
might  be  made  longer,  but  these  are  enough.  When 
other  men  sin  flagrantly ;  when  we  sin  in  any  degree ; 
when  men  suspect  us  although  we  are  innocent ;  when 
men  praise  us ;  when  we  are  tempted  and  resist,  —  at  all 
those  times  the  ground  opens  under  our  feet,  and,  though 
we  stand  safe  and  firm,  we  see  whither  we  might  have 
fallen.  What  is  this  but  saying  that  in  every  serious 
moment  of  life  the  possibility  of  sin  stands  up  before  us  ? 
None  but  the  man  who  has  no  serious  moments,  none  but 
he  who  makes  all  life  a  play,  escapes  the  sight.  To  every 
other  man,  nay,  may  we  not  say  to  every  man,  since  no 
man  is  literally  always  a  trifler,  to  every  man  at  some  time 
the  clouds  roll  back,  the  spell  is  broken,  and  he  se«s  what 
a  power  of  being  wicked  as  of  being  good  belongs  to  him 
just  as  man.  And  now  is  it  good  for  him  to  see  this  ? 
Will  it  help  him  or  harm  him  ?  Perhaps  it  is  a  question 
that  is  needless.  He  cannot  help  himself.  He  mxxst  see  it. 
When  it  has  once  opened  on  him,  he  cannot  shut  his  eyea 
and  forget  it  if  he  would.  He  will  see  it  still  behind  his 
folded  lids.  But  still  we  may  ask  the  question  Will  it 
help  or  harm  him?  And  that  will  depend  upon  the  way 
it  works  in  him.     It  may  become  in  him  either  paralysii 


IS  -r  I?  257 

or  iiiBpiration.  One  man  seea  his  danger  and  stands 
powerless.  Another  man  sees  his  danger  and  every 
faculty  is  strung  to  its  intensest  strength.  It  is  like  the 
way  in  which  the  knowledge  of  the  shortness  of  Hfe  may 
affect  a  man.  One  man  it  fills  with  dismay ;  another 
man  it  turns  into  a  hero.  What  you  want  in  both  cases 
is  to  realize  the  conviction  as  a  motive,  and  not  as  a  mere 
emotion.  I  remember  reading  of  how  some  one  once 
asked  a  veteran  surgeon  what  was  the  effect  of  the  con- 
stant sight  of  human  pain  which  filled  his  life,  —  how  he 
could  bear  it.  And  his  answer  was  wise  and  philosoph- 
ical. He  said  that,  as  near  as  he  could  state  it,  the  sight 
of  pain  ceased  vsdth  the  surgeon  to  act  as  a  source  of  emo* 
tion,  but  continued  to  be  effective  as  a  motive  for  action. 
The  misery  at  seeing  it  passed  away,  but  the  desire  to  re 
lieve  it  grew  stronger  and  stronger.  So  I  think  it  is  with 
the  best  sense  of  our  danger  of  sin.  Not  as  an  emotion, 
not  as  something  that  we  sit  down  and  weep  over,  but  a8 
a  motive,  as  something  that  makes  us  watch  and  work 
and  pray,  does  it  do  its  best  work  for  us.  The  knees 
need  not  tremble,  nor  the  heart  grow  sick.  If  the  feet 
are  set  more  resolutely  toward  goodness,  and  the  hands 
lay  hold  more  firmly  upon  help,  it  is  good  for  us  to  know 
how  wicked  we  may  be,  how  great  our  danger  is. 

And  what  is  ^  that  makes  that  difference  ?  How  is 
the  consciousness  of  dur  danger  prevented  from  becoming 
a  depressing  emotion  and  turned  into  an  inspiring  motive? 
It  must  be  by  opening  the  life  upon  the  other  side.  It 
must  be  by  realizing  the  possibilities  of  our  human  life 
for  good  as  well  as  for  evil,  by  seeing  and  never  forget- 
ting how  good  wo  have  a  chance  to  be,  as  well  as  how  bad 
we  may  become.     This  is  the  power  of  hope ;  and  hope 

17 


258  IS  IT  I? 

is  the  true  master  of  fear.  Hope  uses  fear.  It  demands 
its  service  by  a  iiatviral  right.  It  is  fear's  essential  supe- 
rior. Under  hope  fear  works  well.  But  in  a  life  that 
,t^  has  no  hope  feai  is  a  surly  tyrant.  Now  our  human  nat- 
ure cannot  bear  being  shut  up  in  its  present  condition 
No  man's  nature  can.  Your  nature  feels  its  own  myste- 
rious capacities  too  much  to  believe  for  a  moment  that 
it  can  be  nothing  different  from  what  it  is.  It  crowds 
and  presses  for  an  outlet.  If  it  can  find  an  outlet  only 
on  the  lower  side,  toward  its  possibility  of  sinfulness,  it 
will  go  forth  there  and  contemplate  the  evil  that  lies 
within  its  power  until  it  grows  into  stony  hopelessness. 
But  if  it  finds  an  opening  on  the  upper  side  of  its  present 
condition,  it  prefers  that,  and  going  out  there,  aspiring 
instead  of  despairing,  it  is  simply  driven  on  toward  that 
which  it  is  already  seeking,  by  the  knowledge  of  what  lies 
behind  it  if  by  any  chance  it  should  fall  back.  This  is 
always  the  relation  between  hope  and  fear  in  healthy 
life.  A  merchant  hopes  to  be  rich,  and  the  fear  of  be- 
ing poor,  instead  of  being  a  vexing  anxiety,  becomes 
the  humble  servant  of  his  expectation,  and  helps  him  on 
toward  wealth.  The  fear  of  death  is  terrible  to  a  sick 
man  until  the  hope  of  life  and  strength  and  activity 
opens  before  him  ;  and  then  in  his  convalescence  the  fear 
of  death  has  ceased  to  depress  him  as  a  feeling,  and  only 
remains  with  him  as  a  motive  to  caution  and  watchful- 
ness. Thus  fear  is  always  good  when  it  has  hope  to  rule 
it.  And  now  if  you  saw  a  young  man  overwhelmed  with 
the  sight  on  which  our  eyes  have  been  fixed  to-day  ;  if 
you  saw  him  so  full  of  the  consciousness  of  the  power  of 
sin  in  his  life,  the  possibility  of  the  badness  that  he 
might  do  and  be,  that  he  was  wretched  and  paralyzed- 


IS  IT  I?  259 

what  would  you  do  for  him.     Would  you  try  to  make 

him  forget  what  he  had  seen  ?  Would  you  try  to  shwt 
out  the  mystery  of  his  life  from  him,  and  make  hira  live 
again  the  life  of  narrow  satisfaction  in  the  present  which 
he  lived  before  he  looked  down  into  the  deep  gulf?  Yoa 
could  not  do  it ;  but  if  you  could  would  it  be  well  ? 
Surely  not.  What  you  need  to  do  for  him  is  to  make 
him  lift  up  his  eyes  and  see  the  heights  above  him.  You 
want  to  make  him  like  the  climber  on  a  ladder,  who  looks 
up  and  not  down,  who  climbs  not  to  escape  the  gulf  be- 
low him,  but  to  reach  the  top  above  him,  and  who  feels 
the  gulf  below  him  only  as  a  power  that  makes  the  hold 
of  foot  and  hand  on  every  round  of  the  ladder  which  they 
strike  more  firm.  Now  it  is  the  glory  of  the  Christian 
Gospel  that  in  the  treatment  of  man's  spiritual  nature  it 
preserves  this  true  relation  between  hope  and  fear  per- 
fectly. Christ  is  the  very  embodiment  of  what  I  have 
just  now  been  saying.  Read  your  New  Testament.  As 
the  man  who  feels  its  influence  leaves  his  sin  and  strives 
towards  holiness,  what  is  the  power  of  his  progress  ?  Is 
it  the  fear  of  what  he  leaves  behind  ?  Is  it  not  always 
primarily  the  desire  for  the  holiness  he  seeks  ?  And  yet 
the  saved  of  the  Saviour  as  He  is  borne  onward  into  His 
salvation  never  can  lose  the  sense  of  the  great  deep  below 
him,  into  which  he  must  fall  if  he  lets  the  Saviour  go. 
But  that  sense  only  tightens  more  closely  the  grasp  of 
the  hands  which  have  first  seized  the  hope  that  was  set 
before  them  out  of  ardent  desire.  This,  I  am  sure,  is 
always  the  proportion  of  the  Gospel.  "Flee  from  the 
wrath  to  come"  is  always  an  ally  and  humble  servant  of 
the  great  "  Come  unto  me."  "  Come  unto  me  "  might 
stand  alone,  even  if  there  were  no  "  Flee  from  th«  wrath 


260  IS  IT  I? 

to  conie.  '  But  what  would  "  Flee  from  the  wrath  to 
come  "  be  without  "  Come  unto  me  "  ?  One  is  almost 
ready  to  say :  Better  lose  sight  of  the  mysterious  ca- 
pacity of  life  altogether,  than  to  see  only  one  side  of  it* 
Hide  your  eyes.  Forget  that  you  are  a  sinner ;  never 
dare  look  down  and  see  what  a  sinner  you  may  be,  if 
there  is  no  Saviour  from  your  sin.  But  if  there  is,  and  if 
you  see  Him,  then  feel  the  depth  below  you  and  let  it 
make  you  cling  to  Him  more  closely ;  realize  the  power  of 
sinfulness,  which  has  in  it  the  cruelty  and  falseness  and 
impurity  of  the  worst  men  that  have  lived,  that  you  may 
realize  also  the  power  of  holiness  which  has  in  it  the 
truth  and  bravery  and  gentleness  of  all  the  saints;  let 
the  gulf  under  your  feet  measure  for  you  the  sky  over- 
head. Know  what  a  sinner  you  might  have  been  only 
that  you  may  know  more  deeply  and  gratefully  the  sal- 
vation which  has  saved  you. 

I  suggested  just  now  the  analogy  between  our  physical 
and  moral  consciousness,  between  our  consciousness  of  the 
power  to  be  sick  and  the  consciousness  of  the  power  to 
sin.  It  is  an  analogy  which  illustrates  what  I  have  just 
been  saying.  There  is  a  nervousness  about  health  which 
is  all  morbid.  It  is  full  of  imaginations.  There  are  peo- 
ple who  can  never  hear  a  disease  described  without  think- 
ing that  they  have  it.  They  never  hear  a  sick  man  talk 
without  feeling  all  his  symptoms  repeated  in  themselves. 
You  think  of  such  a  person  and  realize  his  wretchedness. 
Then  you  look  away  from  him  to  a  perfectly  healthy 
man  who  seldom  thinks  about  being  sick  at  all.  But 
yet  he  is  something  different  from  what  he  would  be  if 
there  were  no  power  of  sickness  in  him.  Unconscious  foi 
the  most  part,  but  now  and  then  coming  forth  into  cou- 


IS  IT  I?  261 

Bcicusness,  there  is  always  present  with  him  a  sense  of 
hia  humanity  with  all  the  liabilities  which  that  involves. 
He  does  not  do  what  a  man  would  do  who  had  literally 
a  fiame  of  iron.  And  that  is  just  the  condition  of  the 
man  with  the  healthy  soul.  He  does  not  nervously  be- 
lieve, when  he  hears  of  any  flagrant  crime,  that  he  is  just 
upon  the  brink  of  that  crime  himself.  He  lives  in  doing 
righteousness,  but  all  the  time  he  keeps  the  consciousness 
that  sin,  even  out  to  its  worst  possibilities,  sin  even  to  the 
cruelty  of  Cain,  the  lust  of  David,  the  treachery  of  Judas, 
is  open  to  him.  This  consciousness  surrounds  all  his 
duty.  His  righteousness  is  not  an  angeFs  righteousness. 
It  is  always  a  man's  righteousneBs,  always  pervaded, 
solemnized,  strengthened,  ay,  sweetened  to  him  by  the 
knowledge  that  there  is  a  bad  corresponding  to  every 
good,  and  that  he  might  do  one  instead  of  the  other  just 
because  he  is  a  man. 

I  do  not  care  to  go  one  step  into  the  theological  mys- 
teries of  compelling  grace  and  final  perseverance.  I  do 
not  care  to  ask  whether  it  is  possible  for  man,  stix.-  being 
man,  to  come  to  such  a  point  that  this  of  which  I  have 
spoken  to-day,  this  possibility  of  flagrant  and  terrible 
sin,  should  utterly  and  absolutely  be  left  behind  and  pass 
away.  I  think  that  what  I  have  been  saying  lately  shows 
us  that  a  man,  as  the  power  of  the  hope  of  holiness  takes 
stronger  and  stronger  hold  upon  him,  does  pass  more  and 
more  out  of  the  fear  of  sin.  And  since  his  hope  of  holi- 
ness always  comes  to  him  as  the  gift  of  God,  and  depends 
on  his  dependence  on  God,  we  can  see  that  as  man  by  ex- 
perience grows  sure  of  God,  and  morally  certain  that  he 
never  can  be  separated  from  Him,  he  passes  to  a  profound 
belief  that  he  will  not  fall  into  the  flagrant  ain,  which 


262  IS  IT  I? 

yet,  because  he  is  a  man,  remains  possible  for  him.  This 
moral  certainty  of  his  comes  from  his  confidence  in  God. 
It  is  not  confidence  in  himself.  Here  it  seems  to  me  ia 
the  true  escape  from  whatever  has  seemed  harsh  or  ho{.»e 
less  in  the  truth  which  I  have  preached  to  you  to-day 
The  disciples  heard  Jesus  tell  of  the  coming  treason,  and 
each  of  them  thought  with  horror  that  he  might  be  the 
traitor.  "  Lord,  is  it  I?"  and  "  Is  it  I?"  they  cried. 
They  knew  that  they  loved  their  Lord,  but  they  dared 
not  be  sure  that  they  would  not  desert  Him.  Sufficient 
spiritual  light  had  come  to  them  to  make  them  see  the 
mystery  of  their  own  hearts.  Once,  before  they  had  this 
spiritual  light,  they  would  have  cast  aside  such  a  sus- 
picion as  an  insult.  "  Am  I  not  an  honorable  man  ? ' 
"  Is  not  such  a  mean  act  impossible  for  me  ?  "  Now 
Christ  in  showing  them  their  higher  chance  has  shown 
them  their  lower  chance,  their  danger  too,  and  each  won- 
ders whether  it  can  be  he  who  is  to  do  this  dreadful 
thing.  Now  open  a  later  page  of  the  apostolic  history 
and  hear  St.  Paul  writing  to  his  Romans :  "  Who  shall 
separate  us  from  the  love  of  Christ  ?  Shall  tribulation,  or 
distress,  or  persecution,  or  famine,  or  nakedness,  or  peril, 
or  the  sword  ?  Nay,  in  all  these  things  we  are  more 
than  conquerors  through  Him  who  loved  us."  See  what 
a  change.  Here  is  confidence !  Here  is  a  moral  cer- 
tainty I  Whoever  else  may  turn  traitor,  Paul  is  sure  that 
it  vnll  not  be  he.  But  it  is  confidence  —  not  in  himself 
nor  in  his  manliness  or  honor  —  only  in  Christ  and  in  the 
power  of  His  grace  and  love.  "  More  than  conqueror," 
but  "  more  than  conqueror  through  Him  who  loved  us." 
Is  there  not  here  the  beautiful  progress  of  a  moral  nature 
as  regards  the  whole  matter  of  confidence?    At  the  first  a 


IS  IT  I?  268 

pure  blank  sell-reliince,  the  solid  and  unbroken  self -con- 
tent of  a  man  who  thinks  himself  able  to  meet  and  con* 
quer  all  temptations.  Then  an  insight  into  the  mysteri- 
ous capacity  of  sinning,  which  breaks  and  scatters  the 
confidence  in  self,  and  leaves  the  poor  soul  full  of  fears 
and  doubts.  Then  an  entrance  into  Christ  and  His  love 
and  power,  where  the  soul,  given  to  Him,  finds  a  new 
confidence  in  His  strength,  and  is  sure  with  a  surenesa 
which  has  no  warrant  but  its  trust  in  Him.  Have  you 
ever  watched  one  of  the  waterfalls  that  come  over  the 
perpendicular  side  of  a  steep  mountain  ?  Do  you  remem- 
ber how  it  changes  from  the  top  to  the  bottom  of  its 
fall.  At  first  where  it  comes  over  the  brink  it  is  one 
solid  mass  of  dark-green  water,  compact  and  all  sure  of 
itself.  Then  half-way  down  the  perpendicular  face  ove^ 
which  it  descends,  see  what  a  change  has  come.  Its  sol- 
iiness  has  gone.  It  is  all  mist  and  vapor.  You  can 
hardly  find  it.  Only  like  a  thin  haze  it  hangs  in  front 
<rf  the  dark  rock  behind  it.  But  once  more,  as  it  gets 
farther  down,  see  how  it  gathers  again.  The  mist  col- 
lects, and  is  once  more  a  stream ;  a  new  solidity  appears ; 
and  at  the  mountain's  foot  the  brook,  restored  out  of  its 
distraction,  starts  singing  on  its  way  down  the  bright 
valley,  white  still  with  the  memory  of  the  confusion  into 
which  it  has  been  thrown.  So  is  it  with  the  confidence 
of  man.  It  begins  full  of  self-trust.  It  scatters  and 
seems  lost  as  his  experience  deepens  and  he  learns  his 
own  possibility  of  sin.  It  is  gathered  anew  and  goes  out 
in  happiness  and  helpfulness  when  he  finds  Christ  and 
gives  his  poor  bewildered  and  endangered  soul  into  His 
Icve  for  keeping. 

This  is  the  Bible  picture  of  human  Hfe.     Wiiere  shall 


264  IS  IT  I? 

we  l(X)k  for  any  other  that  is  as  reasonable  or  as  con, 
plate  ?  The  fearless  truster  of  himself ;  the  distressed 
doubter  of  himself  ;  the  faithful  truster  of  Christ  ^ 
They  are  all  here.  We  lay  the  Bible  picture  down  be- 
■ide  our  human  life  and  it  explains  everything.  In  life, 
too,  there  is  the  stout  believer  in  himself,  the  frightened 
disbeliever  in  himself,  and  the  sure  believer  in  God.  As 
a  man  comes  into  Christ,  that  experience  deepens  itself 
axound  him  till  he  has  fulfilled  it  all.  First,  a  stripping 
away  of  his  own  righteousness,  and  then  a  clothing  with 
the  righteousness  which  is  in  Jesus.  First,  a  light  thrown 
upon  himself,  till  it  seems  as  if  there  were  no  wickedness 
he  might  not  do,  and  then  a  drawing  of  his  self  into 
Christ's  self  till  he  sees  there  is  no  holiness  which  he 
may  not  attain.  First,  the  weakness  which  comes  of  self- 
knowledge,  and  then  the  strength  which  is  "  strong  in  the 
Lord  and  in  the  power  of  His  might."  First,  the  fear 
which  cries,  "Is  it  I?"  as  it  hears  the  announcement  of 
some  dreadful  sin ;  and  then  the  wondering  faith  which 
cries,  "  Is  it  I  ?  "  as  the  doors  are  opened  and  they  who 
ure  Christ's  are  called  to  enter  in  to  His  everlasting  life. 


XV. 

THE  FOOD  OF  MAN. 
"  It  ii  written,  Man  shall  not  live  by  bread  alone."  —  Matt.  hr.  4. 

Christ,  at  the  very  opening  of  His  work,  met  the  evil 
spirit  in  the  desert  and  contended  with  him.  The  words 
which  I  have  just  quoted  are  the  answer  of  the  Saviour 
to  one  of  the  attacks  of  Satan.  The  tempter  said,  "  If 
Thou  be  the  Son  of  God,  command  that  these  stones  be 
made  bread."  And  Jesus  answered,  "It  is  written,  Man 
shall  not  live  by  bread  alone,  but  by  every  word  that  > 
proceedeth  out  of  the  mouth  of  God."  Such  an  answer  "^ 
must  have  peculiar  force  and  meaning,  as  it  comes  from 
the  lips  of  Christ.  He  tells  Satan  that  obedience  to  God 
is  better  than  bread  ;  that  if  either  is  to  be  given  up 
there  cannot  be  a  doubt,  there  can  hardly  be  a  difficulty, 
about  the  decision.  With  one  of  these  two  things  which 
He  compares  together,  He  had  been  eternally  familiar. 
The  word,  the  will  of  God,  He  had  known  forever.  He 
had  obeyed  God  in  the  complete  unity  of  nature  which 
He  had  with  God.  We  can  remember  how  touchingly 
His  mind  ran  back  a  few  years  later,  when  He  was  just 
upon  the  brink  of  His  great  agony,  to  this  eternal  inter- 
course with  God :  "  Now,  O  Father,  glorify  Thou  me  with 
Thine  own  self,  with  the  glory  which  I  had  with  Thee  be- 
fore the  world  was."     All  that  He  knew,  the  richness,  the 


266  THE  FOOD  OF  MAN. 

feeding  and  strengthening  power  of  the  word  ol  God. 
And  now  He  had  been  made  man,  and  was  here  upon  the 
earth.  With  his  human  flesh  He  had  assumed  human 
necessities  which  He  had  never  known  by  His  own  ex- 
perience before.  That  hunger,  which  has  so  ruled  men 
always,  which  has  made  them  violate  duty,  commit  great 
crimes,  sacrifice  their  strongest  natural  affections ;  that 
need  of  bread,  which,  working  steadily,  has  developed 
man  into  all  the  progress  of  civilization,  and,  working  vio- 
lently and  spasmodically,  has  turned  man  into  a  brute  • 
that  need  of  bread,  which  always  lies  primary  among  the 
forces  tliat  control  men's  lives,  had  taken  hold  of  this  new 
human  life  of  Jesus.  It  was  a  real  temptation.  He  was 
genuinely  an  hungered.  This  compulsion  of  the  lowei 
nature  has,  for  the  first  time  perhaps  in  Him,  met  the 
compulsion  of  the  higher  nature  under  which  He  has 
wholly  lived.  Now  will  He  yield?  His  whole  work, 
our  whole  hope,  hangs  upon  His  decision.  There  was, 
there  must  have  been,  a  real  chance  of  His  yielding.  But 
as  we  look  at  Him,  we  see  that  He  will  not  yield.  The 
old  eternal  joy  of  serving  God  outweighs  the  new  temp- 
tation of  the  senses.  It  grows  clear  before  Him  that  the 
higher  life  of  the  spirit  is  more  precious  than,  is  worth 
any  sacrifice  of,  the  lower  life  of  the  flesh.  He  says,  "  I 
choose."  The  victory  is  won.  "  Let  me  be  hungry,  but 
let  me  not  disobey  God." 

But  we  see  also,  in  this  reply  of  Jesus,  how  thoroughly 
He  had  entered  into  and  identified  Himself  with  the  hu- 
manity which  He  had  assumed.  He  takes  His  temptation 
as  a  man.  He  gives  His  answer  as  a  man.  It  is  not 
the  speech  of  one  bringing  a  superior  nature,  clothed 
in  superior  strength,  and  so  capable  of  an  exceptionjJ  re* 


THE  FOOD  OF  MAN.  267 

iistance  where  ordinary  manhood  must  give  waj.  It  is 
not,  "  I,  as  God,  must  have  divine  sustenance,  fnd  so  can 
do  without  your  human  food."  It  is,  "  Man  shall  not 
live  by  bread  alone."  Simply  as  men,  we  all,  the  poorest 
and  the  greatest  of  us  all  together,  need  the  life  of  obedi- 
ence, and  any  sacrifice  of  the  flesh  is  cheap  that  win*  it 
for  us.  Here  was  the  second  value  of  the  temptation  4 
Christ.  It  was  not  only  the  divine  Mediator ,  preparipg 
Himself  for  His  task,  and  proving  the  temper  of  th^  arnw 
with  which  He  was  to  fight  the  battle ;  it  was  the  high- 
est, the  perfect  man,  becoming  conscious  of  himseif,  and 
declaring,  in  behalf  of  all  humanity,  the  universal  b'xmats 
necessities.  ''  I,  as  man,"  he  says,  "  need  more  than 
bread.  I  must  not  be  satisfied,  I  am  not  satisfied  with 
mere  food  for  the  body  :  I  must  have  truth."  Humanity 
was  tested  there.  Can  it  in  this  supreme  specimen  of  it 
be  satisfied  with  bread  ?  If  it  can,  then  all  these  dreams, 
these  cravings,  these  discontents,  these  importunate  de- 
mands of  men  for  spiritual  things,  for  truth,  for  duty,  for 
God,  are  mere  chimeras.  If  it  cannot,  if  this  man,  the 
best  of  men,  says  that  food  is  not  enough  for  man,  then 
no  man  ought  to  be  satisfied  so  long  as  he  has  only  the 
mere  nourishment  that  feeds  the  body.  "  Man  shall  not 
live  by  bread  alone."  No  doubt  it  all  seemed  perfectly 
clear  to  Jesus.  It  was  almost  a  truism  to  Him.  Hu- 
manity lay  perfectly  open  to  His  consciousness.  Read- 
ing Himself,  He  read  man  as  man  never  had  been  read 
by  man  before.  He  said,  That  is  not  life  which  bread 
alone  can  feed.  Life  for  man  means  a  spiritual  condi- 
tion which  only  spiritual  forces  can  supply.  Therefore 
of  course,  man  shall  not  live  by  bread  alone.  It  is  like 
saying  tliat  a  tree  cannot  live  merely  upon  water.     It 


2QH  THE  FOOD   OF   MAN. 

needs  other  elements  which  the  rich  earth  most  give. 
That  is  its  nature. 

And  one  thing  more  about  this  assertion  by  Christ  of 
the  higher  necessities  of  man.  He  does  not  simply  dis- 
cern them  in  His  own  human  consciousness.  It  is  notice- 
able that  He  also  corroborates  them  out  of  the  past  ex- 
perience of  men  He  not  merely  sees  in  Himself  that 
man  cannot  live  at  his  fullest  except  in  obedience  to 
God  ;  He  also  discovers  in  the  past  that  men  have  found 
this  out  and  recognized  it.  For,  notice,  His  reply  is  a 
quotation :  "  It  is  written,  Man  shall  not  live  by  bread 
alone."  He  quotes  from  the  speech  which  Moses  had 
made  to  the  people  of  Israel  after  they  had  crossed  the 
desert,  and  when  they  were  just  about  to  enter  the  prom- 
ised land.  He  says,  Moses  found  out  there  in  his  desert, 
what  I  have  found  here  in  my  wilderness.  He  wrote  it 
down,  and  here  I  find  it  true.  So  He  appeals  to  expe> 
rience.  He  strengthens  his  own  present  consciousness  by 
the  assurance  that  other  men  have  known  the  same ;  that 
it  has  always  been  true.  As  He  had  said  before.  It  is 
not  something  which  belongs  to  me  in  my  exceptional 
divine  nature,  but  it  belongs  to  all  men ;  so  He  says  now, 
It  is  not  true  only  in  these  special,  temporary  conditions ; 
it  has  always  been  true.  The  best  and  most  human  men 
have  always  known  it,  —  that  man  was  soul  as  well  as 
body,  and  that  he  did  not  really  live  unless  be  had  not 
merely  bread  for  the  body,  but  truth  and  duty,  God's 
word,  for  the  soul. 

This  was  the  certainty,  then,  to  which  Jesus  came  in 
the  wilderness ;  a  certainty  both  from  consciousness  and 
from  experience.  Now,  if  we  can  put  ourselves  into 
Christ's  position ;  if  we  can  see,  as  it  were,  this  cer- 


THE   FOOD  OF  MAN.  269 

taiiity  growing  up  in  His  soul,  then  we  have  befoie  us 
the  perfect  picture  of  the  opening  struggle  of  every  no- 
ble life.  The  life  begins  in  sense.  The  existence  oi 
childhood  is  all  a  bondage  to  the  senses.  Gradually  it 
emerges,  but  very  slowly,  very  unconsciously ;  until  at 
last  there  comes  some  test.  As  we  study  the  Gospela, 
and  think  upon  human  life,  it  becomes  very  wonderful, 
it  seems  to  me,  how,  in  the  very  order  of  its  circum- 
stances as  well  as  in  its  drift  and  spirit,  that  life  of  Jesus 
represents  the  lives  of  all  men.  Just  at  the  outset  of  our 
work,  to  try  us  whether  we  are  good  for  our  work,  God's 
Spirit  takes  us  into  some  solitude,  some  experience  which, 
whether  it  be  enacted  far  off  in  the  woods,  or  in  the  very 
centre  of  a  crowded  street,  makes  us  realize  for  the  first 
time  that  our  deepest  life  is  alone,  is  ours  and  no  other 
man's  ;  that  we  cannot  live  in  our  fathers  and  our  moth- 
ers ;  that  we  must  live  for  ourselves.  That  is  our  wilder- 
ness,—  that  first  realization  of  our  individuality.  In  that 
wilderness,  in  that  first  conception  of  himself  as  a  re- 
sponsible and  solitary  being,  every  young  man  meets  the 
same  devil  that  the  young  Jesus  met.  Ynd  the  tempta- 
tion is  the  same ;  the  assurance  given  in  some  form  or 
other  that  bread  is  all  that  a  man  needs ;  that  everything 
else  is  a  delusion  ;  that  to  live  a  life  of  physical  comfort 
is  the  only  solid  wish  for  a  man's  soul.  Perhaps  it  is  a 
business  which  he  knows  is  wrong,  but  sees  must  be 
profitable.  Perhaps  it  is  the  abandonment  of  those  he 
ought  to  care  for  so  that  he  may  himself  get  rich.  Per- 
haps it  is  the  hiding  of  his  sincere  convictions  in  order 
to  keep  his  place  in  some  social  company.  Perhaps  it  ia 
connivance  with  a  wicked  man's  sin  in  order  to  preserve 
hia  favor.     Perhaps  it  is  the  postponing  of  charity  t« 


27C  THE  FOOD   OF  MAN. 

some  future  day  when  it  shall  be  easier.  Perhaps  it  la  a 
refusal  to  acknowledge  Christ,  the  Master,  out  of  fear,  or 
because  some  easy,  foolish  friendship  would  be  sacrificed. 
Perhaps  it  is  simply  the  giving  up  of  ambitions,  intel- 
lectual or  spiritual,  for  the  sake  of  quiet,  unperturbed 
respectability.  These  are  real  struggles.  There  is  no 
boy  who  comes  into  the  life  which  Jesus  entered  in  His 
Incarnation  who  does  not  pass  through  the  door  which 
He  passed  through,  and  meet  the  devil  of  these  questions 
where  He  met  him.  And  the  answer  that  every  modern 
young  man  makes,  the  victory  which  he  wins,  if  he  does 
win,  must  be  like  Christ's,  too.  That  double  witness, 
that  decree  of  God  written  on  the  two  tables  of  con- 
Bciousness  and  experience,  must  be,  and  is,  what  every 
man  appeals  to,  who,  taking  his  stand  before  the  tempter, 
says,  "  No  !  I  will  live  not  for  bread  alone,  but  for  truth 
and  duty."  He  appeals  first  to  consciousness.  "  Tell 
me,"  he  says  to  his  tempter,  "  here  are  certain  powers 
in  me,  powers  of  studying,  thinking,  loving,  generously 
suffering.  What  am  I  to  do  with  those  powers  in  the 
life  which  you  want  me  to  li\ns  ?  It  cannot  be  that  that 
is  the  life  which  I  was  meant  to  live,  or  these  powers 
would  not  be  in  me.  Man  cannot  live  by  bread  alone." 
And  then  he  appeals  to  experience.  "  Other  men,  in 
other  days,  have  lived  not  for  the  flesh,  but  for  the  spirit, 
and  have  left  it  on  record  that  though  they  missed  of 
wealth  and  fame,  they  knew  that  so  they  found  their 
true  life.  Their  history  confirms  my  study  of  myself. 
I  read  my  duty  in  their  stories.  '  It  is  written,  Man 
shall  not  live  by  bread  alone.'  "  That  is  the  way  in 
which  the  young  man,  to-day,  here  among  us,  enters  by 
the  same  two-leaved  door  into  the  same  victory  which 


THE  FOOD  0?   MAN.  271 

Jesus  won  years  ago  upon  that  dark  and  dreary  hill  in 

Palestine. 

I  know  this  seems  to  be  drawing  the  picture  too  dra- 
matically. "  There  was  no  such  trial-moment,  no  such 
crisis  in  my  life,"  you  say.  "  There  has  been  nothing 
to  compare  with  that  awful  mountain  and  the  darkness 
and  the  hunger  and  the  present  Satan."  But  still  the 
same  has  come  to  you  that  came  to  Christ.  The  dra- 
matic incidents  were  not  essential  then.  Jesus  might 
have  had  all  that  temptation  while  he  sat  in  His  mother's 
house  at  Nazareth,  or  while  He  travelled  in  the  noisy 
caravan  returning  from  Jerusalem.  In  either  place  He 
might  have  yielded  and  given  up  the  work  that  He  had 
jome  for.  In  either  place  He  might  have  seen  the  glory 
of  that  work,  and  surrendered  everything  else  for  the 
privilege  of  doing  it.  If  Christ  had  yielded,  can  we  not 
picture  Him  as  He  descends  the  mountain  ?  He  has 
tasted  bread.  His  knees  are  strong.  His  famished  body 
lias  received  new  vigor,  but  what  a  weight  is  on  His  soul  I 
How  He  loathes  the  bread  that  He  has  eaten !  How  beau- 
tiful seems  the  chance  that  He  has  cast  away  !  What  a 
terrible  defeat !  And  so  one  wonders  if  the  men  who 
have  given  up  their  chance  of  usefulness  and  goodness, 
merely  to  live  an  easy  life,  do  not  ache  through  all  their 
luxury  with  the  sense  of  their  defeat  and  of  all  that  they 
have  lost.  So  many  of  our  lives  come  crawling  down  the 
mountain,  well-fed  and  comfortable,  despising  themselvea 
*nd  envying  the  poor  hungry  men  who  still  are  doing 
i»ome  of  God's  work,  and  living  the  lives  He  gave  them. 
But  draw  the  other  picture  in  your  mind.  Think  of 
Christ  after  He  has  conquered,  coming  down  with  His 
▼ictory  won,  with  His  life  yet  to  live  indeed,  with  His 


272  THE  FOOD   OF  MAN. 

work  and  suffering  still  before  Him,  but  with  the  resolu 
tion,  the  principle,  of  His  life  established,  and  there  if 
your  man  who  has  chosen  right,  who  from  His  own  con- 
sciousness and  from  the  best  experience  of  all  best  men 
has  learned  indeed  that  it  is  not  by  bread  alone,  but  by 
the  word  of  God,  that  He  must  live. 

But  let  us  ask  now  a  little  more  carefully,  what  it  is 
for  which  consciousness  and  the  best  experience  of  our 
race  unite  in  saying  that  the  immediate  advantage  and 
pleasure  of  the  senses  must  be  surrendered.  Jesus  de- 
scribed it  to  His  tempter  as  "  The  word  of  God."  "  Not 
by  bread  alone,  but  by  every  word  that  proceedeth  out 
of  the  mouth  of  God."  And  the  word  of  God  includes 
two  notions,  one  of  revelation  and  one  of  commandment. 
Whenever  God  speaks  by  any  of  His  voices,  it  is  first  to 
tell  us  soii±e  truth  which  we  did  not  know  before,  and 
second  to  bid  us  do  something  which  we  have  not  been 
doing.  Every  word  of  God  includes  these  two.  Truth 
and  duty  are  always  wedded.  There  is  no  truth  which 
has  not  its  corresponding  duty.  And  there  is  no  duty 
which  has  not  its  corresponding  truth.  We  are  always 
separating  them.  We  are  always  trying  to  learn  truths, 
as  if  there  were  no  duties  belonging  to  them,  as  if  the 
knowing  of  them  would  make  no  difference  in  the  way 
we  lived.  That  is  the  reason  why  our  hold  on  the  truths 
we  learn  is  so  weak.  And  we  are  always  trying  to  do 
duties  as  if  there  were  no  truths  behind  them ;  as  if,  that 
is,  they  were  mere  arbitrary  things  which  rested  on  no 
principles  and  had  no  intelligible  reasons.  That  is  the 
reason  why  »ve  do  our  duties  so  superficially  and  unrelia- 
bly. When  every  truth  is  rounded  into  its  duty,  and 
every  duty  is  deepened  into  its  truth,  then  we  shall  have 


THE   FOOD   OF  MAN.  273 

a  clearness  and  consistency  and  permanence  of  morai  ufe 
which  we  hardly  dream  of  now. 

Every  word  of  God,  then,  is  both  truth  and  duty,  rey- 
elation  and  commandment.  He  who  takes  any  new  word 
of  God  completely  gets  both  a  new  truth  and  a  new  duty. 
He,  then,  who  lives  by  every  word  of  God,  is  a  man  who  . 
is  continually  seeing  new  truth  and  accepting  the  duties  'fs 
that  arise  out  of  it.  And  it  is  for  this,  for  the  pleasure 
of  seeing  truth  and  doing  its  attendant  duty,  that  he  ia 
willing  to  give  up  the  pleasures  of  sense,  and  even,  if 
need  be,  to  give  up  the  bodily  life  to  which  the  pleasures 
of  sense  belong.  As  a  man  keeps  or  loses  his  capacity 
of  doing  this,  of  weighing  these  two  against  each  other, 
and  deciding  rightly  which  is  the  more  precious,  he  keeps 
or  loses  his  manhood.  The  real  first  question  that  you 
want  to  ask  about  any  new  man  whom  you  meet,  and 
whom  you  desire  to  measure,  is  not  whether  he  is  rich  or 
poor,  fashionable  or  unfashionable,  learned  or  unlearned, 
but  whether  he  has  kept  this  capacity  ;  whether  if  God 
showed  him  that  something  was  true  and  out  of  that 
truth  there  issued  some  duty  for  him,  he  would  be  able 
and  willing  to  put  his  comfort  aside,  and  take  the  duty 
and  perform  it.  I  think  that  one  of  the  most  interesting 
things  about  our  relations  to  our  fellow-men  is  the  way 
in  which  we  feel  in  them  the  presence  or  the  absence  of 
this  capacity.  I  do  not  say  that  our  feeling  about  them 
is  unerring.  Again  and  again  we  find  ourselves  mis- 
taken. But  about  almost  every  man  whom  we  know,  1 
think  we  have  some  feeling  of  this  sort.  To  each  one 
we  apply  this  test.  Two  men  are  living  side  by  side,  in 
the  same  comfort,  in  the  same  easy  business.  Every 
want  of  each  is  satisfied  completely.     How  is  it  that  I 

18 


k 


274  THE  FOOD  CF  MAK. 

know  about  these  men  that  if  God  were  to  make  known 
to  both  of  them  together  the  truth  that  a  multitude  of 
His  people  were  being  wronged,  and  the  consequent  duty 
were  plain  to  both  of  them  that  they  ought  to  bra^e 
everything  and  sacrifice  everything  to  claim  their  rights 
for  the  oppressed,  one  of  them  would  certainly  leave  hie 
house  and  all  his  luxuries  without  a  moment's  hesitation 
to  go  and  do  this  work,  and  the  other  would  refuse  the 
task,  and  let  the  wrongs  go  on  unrighted  till  the  judg- 
ment day  ?  Why  is  it  that  we  feel  the  difference  ?  Why 
is  it  that  we  cannot  help  thinking  whether  every  man  is 
living  by  bread  or  living  by  the  word  of  God  ?  It  is  be- 
cause that  is  the  real  fundamental  mark  of  manhood.  It 
is  because  all  other  distinctions  between  man  and  man 
are  superficial  and  insignificant.  That  alone  lets  us  see 
thoroughly  what  sort  of  men  they  are. 

Our  judgments  of  other  men,  by  this  or  any  other 
standard,  are  of  small  account.  We  come  to  feel  more 
and  more,  I  think,  how  utterly  unimportant  is  what  we 
think  of  our  brethren,  or  what  they  think  of  us.  It  is 
generally  all  wrong,  or,  if  right,  it  is  right  by  accident. 
But  how  is  it  with  our  judgments  of  ourselves  ?  Can 
we  ask  ourselves  what  we  are  living  by?  If  the  test 
came  to  us,  if  our  superficial  anxieties  about  ourselves 
were  swept  aside,  so  that  the  only  real  anxiety  which  a 
man  has  a  right  to  feel  about  his  life  were  manifest,  as  a 
gtrocg  wind  sweeps  the  mist  out  of  the  mountain  valley 
and  lets  us  see  the  rock,  is  there  any  rock  there  to  see, 
any  real  care  for  truth  and  righteousness,  for  the  truth 
that  issues  in  duty  and  the  duty  that  comes  by  truth  ? 

I  know  with  what  a  rebuke  such  questions  come  to  all 
of  us.     I  know  how  they  uncover  the  shallowness  and 


THE   FOOD   OF  MAN.  276 

Mlfishness  in  which  we  li^e.  As  we  isk  them  oi  oui> 
selves,  and  look  around  upon  the  world,  it  seems  some- 
times as  if  it  all  were  hopeless  ;  as  if  everybody  was  liv- 
ing by  bread  alone,  and  nobody  by  the  word  of  God, 
which  we  saw  meant  truth  and  duty.  But  on  this  as  on 
all  subjects  connected  with  the  actual  condition  of  man- 
kind, I  hold  that  despair  and  misanthropy  are  no  less 
false  in  fact,  and  are  even  more  mischievous  as  a  philos- 
ophy, than  the  other  extreme  of  optimism.  While  we  do 
see  men  slaves  to  their  senses,  sacrificing  the  true  to  the 
easier  false,  and  duty  to  the  immediate  expediency,  there 
is,  and  every  man  ought  to  know  for  his  encouragement 
that  there  is,  a  deep  and  constant  witness  in  human  his- 
tory of  man's  undying  capacity  for  the  higher  life.  We 
must  not  lose  sight  of  it.  The  temptation  of  Jesus  was, 
as  I  think  we  saw,  not  a  splendid,  solitary  victory  of 
divinity  over  human  conditions.  It  was  the  assertion  of 
the  possible  victory  that  waits  for  every  man  who,  like 
Christ,  has  in  him  the  power  of  divinity.  Jesus  found 
in  His  human  consciousness  the  original  purpose  of  hu- 
man life.  He  brought  it  out  clearly.  He  said,  It  is  not 
the  divine  prerogative  alone.  Here  it  is  in  man,  —  the 
power  to  live,  not  for  comfort  but  for  truth  and  duty. 
Here  it  is  in  this  humanity  of  mine,  along  with  all  else 
that  is  truly  human,  all  my  tastes  and  propensities,  all 
my  aches  and  pains.  Here  it  is  in  me,  and,  lo  I  other 
men  have  found  it  in  themselves.  "  It  is  written,  Man 
shall  not  live  by  bread  alone." 

And  men,  all  the  more  clearly  since  Jesus  showed  it 
there,  are  always  finding  in  their  own  consciousness,  and 
In  the  prolonged  consciousness  of  their  race  which  we 
call  experience  or  history,  this  same  higher  capacity  cw 


276  THE   FOOD   OF  MAN. 

higher  necessity  of  man.  They  find  it  in  their  own  co* 
Bciousness.  What  do  we  make  of  every  strong  youni 
man's  discontent  with  the  actual  conditions  of  things  be- 
fore he  settles  down  into  the  limited  contentment,  the 
sense  that  things  are  about  as  good  as  they  are  likely 
to  be,  which  makes  up  the  dull  remainder  of  his  life  ? 
Question  yourself  and  see  how  there  is  something  in  you 
which  rebels  when  the  lower  expediency  of  any  action 
is  set  before  you  as  its  sufficient  justification,  how  some- 
thing rises  up  in  you  and  tells  you  that  there  is  a  higher 
expediency,  and  makes  you  want  to  sweep  away  the 
worldly  maxims  which  you  cannot  confute,  but  which 
you  know  are  false.  Sometimes  there  comes  in  all  of 
us  a  strong,  deep  craving  to  give  up  this  endless,  compli- 
cated search  after  what  it  is  safe  or  proper  or  fashion 
able  to  believe,  and  just  to  seek  what  is  true  ;  and  to  get 
rid  of  these  thousand  artificial  standards  of  what  a  man 
is  expected  to  do,  and,  come  of  it  what  will,  simply  do 
what  is  right :  and  when  we  are  simply  asking,  "  What  is 
right?"  the  answer  always  comes.  Sometimes  the  buried 
giant,  conscience,  stirs  under  the  mountain,  and  shakes 
all  the  villages  and  vineyards  which  we  have  planted 
on  its  sides.  And  then  we  are  merely  finding  in  our- 
selves, in  our  humanity,  what  Jesus  found  in  His  when, 
with  the  devil  drawing  Him  away.  He  put  His  hand 
down  to  the  depths  of  the  nature  which  He  had  assumed, 
and  took  out  from  under  all  the  accumulated  rubbish  ci 
low  and  artificial  needs  the  original,  essential  intention 
of  man's  life,  which  had  been  lying  there  ever  since  the 
day  when  God  made  man  in  His  image. 

One  cannot  be  a  misanthrope  '  r  a  sceptic  about  this. 
There  always  is  this  deeper  power  in  man,  an/i  men  are 


THE   FOOD   OF  MAN.  277 

always  finding  it  there.  I  think  we  are  amazed  not  at 
the  rarity,  but  rather  at  the  abundance,  of  the  power  of 
martyrdom.  When  a  great  cause  breaks  out  in  war,  and 
aeeds  its  champions,  how  wonderful  it  is  to  us,  with  our 
low  notions  of  humanity,  to  see  the  land  with  its  furrows 
full  of  the  deserted  plows  from  which  the  men  have  run 
to  go  and  die  for  principle,  and  save  their  country.  How 
wonderfully  frequent  are  the  stories  that  we  hear  of  men 
giving  their  lives  to  do  their  duty.  The  exception  is 
where  the  engineer  of  the  railroad  train  which  is  rushing 
into  certain  ruin  deserts  his  post ;  not  where  he  stands 
still  and  calm,  and  is  found  with  the  iron  clenched  in  hia 
dead  hand.  No  doubt,  if  he  had  time  to  think  of  it  at  all, 
he  would  be  surprised  at  himself  in  the  terrible  instant 
when  his  quick  resolve  was  made.  He  reaches  down 
through  the  ordinary  standards  of  his  life,  and  takes  up 
the  deepest  one  of  all,  and  says,  "  ]\Ian  shall  not  live  by 
bread  alone,  but  by  every  word  of  God  ;  and  the  word 
of  God  which  is  my  duty  now  says.  Stand  and  die ;  and 
BO  I  cannot  live  except  by  dying."  And  in  spite  of  all 
the  men  who  are  sacrificing  their  convictions  to  their  in- 
terests, there  are  thousands  of  men  who  might  be  at  the 
head  of  things,  and  rich  and  famous,  if  they  would  only 
give  up  what  they  think  is  true  for  bread.  Oh,  it  is 
very  common  !  Men  find  in  their  own  nature  necessities 
which  they  must  submit  to,  and  they  do  submit  to  them. 
We  can  hear  in  their  submission,  though  it  makes  them 
very  poor,  something  of  that  same  trumpet-like  triumph 
and  exaltation  whicn  I  think  we  always  feel  in  those 
words  from  the  lips  of  the  sick  and  hungry  Jesus,  "  Not 
by  bread  alone,  but  by  the  word  of  God." 

And  what  a  man  finds  in  his  own  consciousness,  h« 


278  THE  FOOD  OF  MAN. 

is  strengthened  by  being  able  also  to  recognize  m  th« 
whole  history  of  his  race.  "  It  is  written  "  long  ago,  this 
which  he  is  doing  now.  He  is  only  tracing  over  with 
his  blood  the  unfaded  characters  which  other  men  have 
written  in  theirs.  It  is  not  a  mere  whim  of  his,  this 
conviction  that  it  is  better  to  serve  God  than  to  eat 
bread.  It  is  the  corporate  conviction  of  mankind.  That 
is  a  very  mysterious  support,  but  it  is  a  real  one.  It 
plants  the  weak  tree  of  your  will  or  mine  into  the  rich 
soil  of  humanity.  Do  not  lose  that  strength.  Do  not 
so  misread  history  that  it  shall  seem  to  you  when  you  try 
to  do  right  as  if  you  were  the  first  man  that  ever  tried  it. 
Put  yourself  with  your  weak  little  struggle  into  the  com- 
pany of  all  the  strugglers  in  all  time.  Recognize  in 
your  little  fight  against  your  avarice,  or  your  untruthful- 
ness, or  your  laziness,  only  one  skirmish  in  that  battle 
whose  field  covers  the  earth,  and  whose  clamor  rises  and 
falls  from  age  to  age,  but  never  wholly  dies.  See  in  the 
perpetual  struggle  of  good  and  evil  that  the  impulse  after 
good  is  eternal,  and  the  higher  needs  are  always  asserting 
their  necessity.  In  their  persistent  assertion  read  the 
prophecy  of  their  final  success  and  take  courage. 

In  consciousness  and  in  experience  man  finds  the  wit- 
less of  his  higher  nature.  But  consciousness  and  experi- 
ence both  of  them  are  weak  in  all  of  us.  Here  is  where 
the  revelation  of  Christ  comes  in.  Christ  is  both  the 
revealer  of  a  man's  life  to  himself,  and  the  revealer  of 
the  world's  life  to  all  of  us.  When  I  thoroughly  appre- 
hend the  story  of  the  Gospels,  I  can  see  what  my  own 
uature  means  in  its  mysterious  movements,  and  I  can 
discover  forces  which  have  been  at  work  in  all  the  history 
af  mankind  to  which  I  have  before  been  blind.     As  I  be* 


THE   FOOD   OF  MAN.  279 

come  His  servant,  the  necessity  of  doing  nght  and  fen  ow- 
ing truth  comes  out  from  my  own  consciousness  and  de* 
Glares  itself.  As  I  see  in  Him  the  ruler  of  history,  ah 
history  becomes  luminous  with  this  struggle  of  the  better 
power  in  man  to  get  the  upper  hand.  This  makes  clear 
what  perhaps  you  have  doubted  about  as  I  have  spoken 
to  you  this  morning.  I  have  seemed  to  point  to  man's 
consciousness  and  to  human  history  as  the  revealers  of 
man's  capacity  for  truth  and  duty.  "Is  it  not  Christ," 
you  say,  "who  alone  can  bring  or  show  us  any  good?" 

Yes  indeed  and  always  that  is  true.  But  it  is  by  His 
touch  laid  upon  our  own  natures  and  the  world's  experi- 
ence that  he  sends  His  light  to  us.  It  is  He  who  gives 
them  all  their  voice.  Mere  stammerers  and  whisperers 
before,  it  has  been  by  Him  that  they  have  learned  to 
speak  and  give  men  their  incitement  and  hope. 

Ah,  here  is  the  true  secret.  It  is  when  Christ  is  in 
you  that  the  highest  motives  become  practically  powerful 
upon  your  life.  We  think  of  Christ  as  the  liberator.  To 
many  souls  it  is  His  most  attractive  character.  But  we  do 
need  to  know  what  the  character  of  the  liberation  which 
He  brings  us  is.  It  is  not  simply  that  as  we  lie  chained 
upon  the  ground  He  comes  and  breaks  our  chains,  and 
lets  us  lie  there  still,  bound  down  by  the  torpor  which  our 
chained  condition  has  created  in  us,  slaves  to  our  own 
inability  to  rise.  That  is  not  the  glorious  redemption. 
That  is  a  purely  negative  freedom.  What  Christ  desires 
to  do  for  you  is  something  far  nobler  and  more  divine 
than  that.  He  wants  to  awaken  your  dead  conscience 
and  to  quicken  into  life  and  invitation  the  apparently 
dead  and  depressing  experience  around  you,  so  that  you 
■hall  feel  in  yourself  the  response  to  higher  motives,  and 


280  THE  FOOD  OF  MAN. 

recognize  in  all  history  the  loftier  and  more  spiritnal  po8« 
sibility  of  man.  If  He  could  do  that  for  you,  then  there 
would  be  real  liberation.  You  would  no  longer  be  the 
slave  of  sensible  things,  not  because  you  had  learned  to 
despise  them,  not  because  you  thought  your  business, 
or  your  home,  or  your  social  pleasure  contemptible  or 
wicked,  but  because  you  had  seen  the  joy  of  higher 
things,  —  truth,  God,  charity,  character,  heaven,  —  and 
the  channel  of  affection  was  clear  between  them  and  your 
Boul.  That  is  true  liberty.  It  does  not  cast  the  lower 
things  away.  As  Christ  said  to  Satan,  "  Man  shall  not 
live  by  bread  alone."  He  shall  live  by  bread,  but  not 
by  bread  alone.  The  lower  wants  are  recognized.  The 
things  that  supplied  them  are  not  thrown  away,  but 
they  are  used  no  longer  to  enslave  and  bind,  but  simply 
to  sustain  and  steady  the  life  which  moves  now  under 
spiritual  impulse ;  as  the  ship  which  has  cast  loQse  from 
its  bondage  to  the  shore  and  goes  with  wind  and  steam 
exultantly  out  to  sea  still  carries  some  of  that  shore  for 
ballast  in  its  hold.  That  is  the  relation  which  the  spir- 
itual man  still  holds  to  the  things  of  the  senses.  The 
man  in  Christ  makes  the  world  serve  no  longer  as  dock, 
but  as  ballast ;  no  longer  as  confinement,  but  as  balance 
for  the  new  hfe  which  he  lives. 

There  is  great  meaning  in  the  words  that  Jesus  was 
continually  using  to  describe  the  work  that  He  did  for 
men's  souls.  He  brought  them  into  "  the  kingdom  of 
God."  The  whole  burden  of  His  preaching  was  to  estab- 
'  lish  the  kingdom  of  God.  The  purpose  of  the  new  birth 
for  which  He  labored  was  to  make  men  subjects  of  the 
kingdom  of  God.  Is  it  not  clear  what  it  means  ?  The 
kingdom  of  God  for  any  soul  is  that  condition,  anywhere 


THE  FOOD    OF  MAN.  281 

in  the  universe,  where  God  is  that  soul's  king,  where  it 
seeks  and  obeys  the  highest,  where  it  loves  truth  and 
duty  more  than  comfort  and  luxury.  Have  you  entered 
into  the  kingdom  of  God?  Oh,  how  much  that  means. 
Ilaa  any  love  of  God  taken  possession  of  you  so  that  you 
want  to  do  His  will  above  all  things,  and  try  to  do  it  all 
the  time  ?  Has  Christ  brought  you  there  ?  If  He  has, 
how  great  and  new  and  glorious  the  life  of  the  kingdom 
seems.  No  wonder  that  He  said  you  must  be  born  again 
before  you  could  enter  there.  How  poor  life  seems  out- 
aide  that  kingdom  !  How  beautiful  and  glorious  inside 
its  gates  ! 

If  I  tried  to  tell  you  how  Christ  brings  us  there,  1 
Aould  repeat  to  you  once"  more  the  old,  familiar  story. 
He  comes  and  lives  and  dies  for  us.  He  touches  us  with 
gratitude.  He  sets  before  our  softened  lives  His  life. 
He  makes  us  see  the  beauty  of  holiness,  and  the  strength 
of  the  spiritual  life  in  Him.  He  transfers  His  life  to  us 
through  the  open  channel  of  faith,  and  so  we  come  to 
live  as  He  lives,  by  every  word  that  proceedeth  out  of 
the  mouth  of  God.  How  old  the  story  is,  but  how  end- 
lessly fresh  and  true  to  him  whose  own  career  it  de- 
scribes. 

In  this  world  we  must  be  either  conquerors  or  slaves. 
We  know  what  it  is  to  be  the  world's  slaves,  but  what 
it  ia  to  be  its  conquerors  through  Christ,  that  no  man 
knows  entirely.  We  come  to  know  it  more  and  more  aa 
the  long  struggle  and  fight  go  on.  We  shall  know  it 
perfectly  only  when  the  liberated  spirit  casts  the  flesh 
away  and  goes  to  live  with  the  God  by  whom  it  has  lived 
»o  long.  - 


XVI. 

THE  SYMBOL  AND  THE  REALITY. 

*  The  SUB  Bhall  be  no  more  thy  light  by  day :  neither  for  brightnOB 
aball  the  moon  give  light  nnto  thee :  but  the  Lord  shall  be  onto  thee  an 
eT«rlasting  light,  and  thy  God  thy  glory."  —  Isaiah  Ix.  19. 

In  the  midst  of  the  glowing  picture  of  Messiah's  king- 
dom, which  Isaiah  draws,  occur  these  words.  He  is  tell- 
ing of  the  wonderful  changes  which  are  to  come  when 
mankind  shall  have  reached  perfection  under  the  govern- 
ment  of  its  perfect  master.  Especially  he  is  speaking  to 
the  Jewish  church  and  nation.  The  pages  are  bright 
with  promises.  "  For  brass  I  will  bring  gold,  and  for  iron 
I  will  bring  silver,  and  for  wood  brass,  and  for  stones  iron: 
I  will  also  make  thy  officers  peace,  and  thine  exactors 
righteousness.  Violence  shall  no  more  be  heard  in  thy 
land,  wasting  nor  destruction  within  thy  borders;  but 
thou  shalt  call  thy  walls  Salvation,  and  thy  gates  Praise." 
And  then  there  comes  this  other  promise,  which  I  quoted 
for  my  text.  The  prophet  bids  his  people  look  forward 
to  a  time  when  even  the  sun  and  moon  shall  become 
needless  to  them ;  when  in  some  new  and  more  direct 
experience  of  God  they  shall  need  nothing  to  reflect  Hia 
light  to  them,  but  drink  immediately  from  Himself  His 
strength  and  inspiration.  That  seems  to  be  the  meaning 
of  the  words  ;  and  so  it  points  us  to  one  feature  which 
belongs  to  ev^ry  progress,  the  power  to  do  without  one 


THE  SYMBOL  AND  THE  REALITY.         283 

thing  after  another  which  has  before  been  essential,  the 
way  in  which,  as  we  advance  to  higher  and  higher  sup- 
plies, we  are  able  to  gather  out  of  them  what  we  used  to 
get  from  lower  sources.  It  is  like  that  verse  in  St.  John'e 
description  of  the  New  Jerusalem  :  "  I  saw  no  tempi* 
therein,  for  the  Lord  God  Almighty  and  the  Lamb  are  the 
temple  of  it."  Or  like  these  soberer  words  of  St.  Paul's 
autobiography ;  *'  When  I  became  a  man  I  put  away 
childish  things."  This  life  that  rises  to  the  highest  helps 
and  companies  is  able  easily  to  do  without  the  lower. 

There  is  no  better  test  of  men's  progress  than  this  ad- 
vancing power  to  do  without  the  things  which  used  to 
be  essential  to  their  lives.     As  we  climb  a  high  mountain 
we  must  keep  our  footing  strong  upon  one  ledge  until  we 
have  fastened  ourselves  strongly  on  the  next.     Then  we 
may  let  the  lower  foothold  go.     The  lives  of  men  who 
have  been  always  growing  are  strewed  along  their  whole 
course  with  the  things  which  they  have  learned  to  do 
without.     As  the  track  of  an  army  marching  deep  into 
an  enemy's  country  is  scattered  all  along  with  the  equi- 
page which  the  men  seemed  to  find  necessary  when  they 
started,  but  which  they  have  learned  to  do  without  as 
the  exigencies  of   their  march  grew  greater,  and   they 
found  that  these  provisions  and  equipments  were  partly 
such  as  they  did  not  need  at  all,  and  partly  such  as  they 
could  gather  oat  of  the  land  through  which  they  marched  ; 
Bc  from  the  time  when  the  child  casts  his  leading  strings 
aside  because  his  legs  are  strong  enough  to  carry  him 
alone,  the  growing  man  goes  on   forever  leaving   each 
help  for  a  higher,  until  at  last,  ia  that  great  change  to 
which  Isaiah's  words  seem  to  apply,  he  can  do  without 
8un  and  moon  as  he  enters  into  the  immediate  presence 
and  essential  life  of  God. 


2&4  THE   SYMBOL  AND   THE  REALITY. 

For  everything  is  valuable  only  in  relation  to  tha 
powers  and  tastes  to  which  it  is  of  use.  Nothing  hai 
any  value  which  does  not  meet  and  satisfy  the  hunger  of 
some  organ  of  our  life,  and  everything  has  value  only  for 
that  organ,  and  that  condition  of  any  organ,  which  it 
satisfies.  Books  have  no  value,  directly,  for  the  tast^i 
nor  bread  for  the  mind.  Now  every  power  that  is  in  us, 
it  it  is  healthy,  hungers  after  food,  and  it  will  seize  like 
any  hungry  thing  on  what  food  it  can  find.  But  every 
power  is  capable  of  culture,  capable  of  being  brought 
up  to  appreciate  higher  and  higher  foods.  And  as  each 
power  comes  to  a  higher  condition,  and  finds  its  higher 
food  and  learns  to  love  it,  it  is  able  to  let  go  the  food  in 
which  it  has  delighted  simply  because  it  must  delight  in 
something,  and  to  rest  in  its  new-found  higher  satisfac- 
tion. And  what  is  true  of  every  single  power  is  true 
about  the  aggregate  of  powers,  —  our  total  self  considered 
as  one  whole.  We  must  have  what  will  give  us  pleasure 
and  occupy  our  lives.  But  as  we  grow  we  come  to  the 
capacity  of  higher  pleasures  and  higher  occupations,  and 
so  let  go  the  lower  ones ;  not  by  compulsion,  because  we 
cannot  hold  them  any  longer,  but  from  the  satisfaction  of 
our  newer  lives ;  because  we  have  got  something  else 
better  than  they  are,  and  can  do  without  them  now. 
This  is  the  way  in  which  a  true  man  puts  away  child- 
ish things.  This  is  the  meaning  of  that  pleasing  sort  of 
regret  with  which  we  sometimes  go  back  to  the  occupa- 
tions of  our  childhood,  to  the  books  we  used  to  read, 
the  tasks  we  used  to  study,  the  friends  with  whom  we 
trifled,  the  fields  where  we  idly  wandered.  We  think 
we  want  all  these  things  back  again.  We  think  we 
ahould  he  happy  if   tbey  were  all  restored   to   is  once 


THE  SYMBOL  AND  THE  REALITY.         285 

more,  oat  when  wp  touch  them  we  find  their  charm  is 
gone ;  and  with  a  strange  and  pathetic  mixture  of  dis- 
content and  pride,  of  pain  and  joy,  we  learn  that  he  who 
has  grown  to  any  higher  life  not  only  may,  but  must, 
do  without  his  old  satisfactions.  Sometimes  you  see  a 
young  man  who  has  not  grown.  No  higher  work,  no 
higher  life  has  opened  to  him ;  and  what  marks  him  as 
different  from  his  growing  comrades,  what  shows  how 
they  have  outstripped  him,  is  just  this  :  that  they  can  do 
without  what  he  must  have.  They  have  put  away  chLd- 
ish  things  for  their  manly  occupations,  while  he  must 
still  be  busy  with  his  little  vanities  and  conceits  and 
plays  and  emulations,  because  he  has  grown  up  to  noth- 
ing else,  as  the  idiot  of  forty  will  play  still  with  the  toys 
of  babyhood. 

Now  this  change  from  childhood  into  manhood  is  only 
the  picture  of  all  the  spiritual  and  moral  advances  which 
men  make  through  all  their  lives.  Every  imperfect  con 
dition  is  to  the  perfect  condition  what  the  child's  life  is  to 
the  man's  life ;  and  the  advance  from  one  to  the  other, 
if  we  examine  it,  is  always  a  change  into  greater  and 
more  complete  reality.  The  things  which  childhood  val- 
ues are  the  symbols  or  types  of  the  things  which  the 
man  will  value  by  and  by,  and  the  reason  why  the  man 
is  able  to  let  the  child's  treasures  drop  and  do  without 
them  is  that  he  has  reached  the  reality  which  those 
precious  things  of  childhood  only  represented.  The  man 
does  not  want  the  boy's  sports,  because  he  has  found  in 
the  serious  work  of  life  the  true  field  for  those  emulations 
and  activities  which  were  only  practising  and  trying 
themselves  in  the  play-ground.  The  man  can  do  with- 
out the  boy's  perpetual  physical  activity,  because  he  hai 


286  THE  SYMBOL  Am>   THE  REALITY. 

come  to  the  pleasures  of  an  active  mind  which  the  rest- 
lessness of  the  child's  body,  his  pleasure  in  mere  move- 
ment, anticipated  and  prophesied.  It  seems  as  if  the 
change  from  boyhood  into  a  true  manhood  could  not  be 
more  justly  described  than  as  an  advance  from  dealing 
with  symbols  to  dealing  with  realities.  And  if,  then, 
every  progress  in  life  is  a  change  from  some  new  boy- 
hood to  some  yet  riper  manhood  ;  if  every  man  is  a  child 
to  his  own  possible  maturer  seK ;  may  it  not  be  truly 
stated  that  all  the  spiritual  advances  of  life  are  advances 
from  some  symbol  to  its  reality,  and  that  the  abandoned 
interests  and  occupations  which  strew  the  path  which  we 
have  travelled  are  the  symbols  which  we  have  cast  away 
easily  because  we  had  grasped  the  realities  for  which 
they  stood? 

Such  an  idea,  if  it  were  true,  would  seem  to  help  and 
enlighten  us  in  various  ways.  It  would  make  us  look 
with  complacency,  without  regret,  upon  the  things  which 
we  have  left  behind  us.  It  would  help  us  to  understand 
our  neighbors  who  make  nothing  of,  or  make  very  light 
of,  what  we  prize  very  much.  On  the  other  hand,  it 
would  give  us  a  charitable  understanding  of  and  hope  for 
our  other  neighbors  who  are  still  caring  very  much  about 
things  which  we  have  ceased  to  value ;  and  it  would  al- 
low us  to  find  great  pleasure  in  many  things,  while  all 
the  time  we  know  that  we  cannot  rest  in  them  forever, 
that  sometime  we  must  pass  beyond  them  to  the  higher 
and  complete  things  of  which  they  are  only  the  symbols. 

Let  t4s  take  two  or  three  instances  of  those  things 
which  are  valuable  as  symbols,  but  which  he  is  able  to  do 
without  who  has  got  beyond  the  symbol  and  gained  the 
reality  which  it  represents.    Take  the  iistance  of  wealtht 


THE  SYMBOL  AND  THE  REALITY.  287 

There  are  some  men  who  can  do  without  being  rich,  — 
plenty  of  men  who  have  to,  but  some  men  who  can,  can 
easily,  can  without  discontent  or  trouble.  They  have 
the  universal  human  passions.  They  are  not  monsters  in 
the  shape  of  men,  much  as  it  may  appear  as  if  they  were, 
in  the  midst  of  the  crowd  of  money  seekers.  They  love 
comfort  and  respectability  as  much  as  these  their  neigh- 
bors. What  is  the  difference  ?  Simply  this,  that  they 
have  found  that  comfort  and  respectability,  while  money 
is  their  natural  symbol,  are  not  dependent  upon  money 
and  that  one  may  reach  past  the  symbol  and  take  the 
reality,  and  let  the  symbol  go.  Is  it  not  true,  and  is  it 
not  striking,  that  while  we  all  feel  that  comfort  and 
respectability  are  naturally  symbolized  by  wealth,  yet 
the  most  comfortable  and  respectable  men  in  town  are 
not  always,  perhaps  are  very  rarely,  the  wealthiest  men  ? 
The  symbol  is  good,  but  there  will  always  be  some  men 
who  have  seized  the  reaUty  so  completely  that  they  can 
do  without  the  symbol.  How  it  shows  when  two  men 
fail.  One  of  them  keeps  his  honor,  his  good  repute,  his 
self-respect,  and  he  can  do  without  money.  He  has  the 
reality,  and  can  let  the  symbol  go.  The  other  man  haa 
nothing  :  no  respect  of  other  men,  no  respect  of  himself. 
He  has  nothing  but  the  money.  When  that  is  gone  he 
has  nothing.  He  cannot  do  without  it,  and  so  he  flees  to 
the  pistol,  or  the  poison,  or  the  river.  There  is  this  lam- 
entable lack  of  the  power  to  do  without  money,  which 
makes  these  men  the  slave  of  their  money.  The  fact  ia 
that  every  symbol  ought  to  be  always  fitting  us  to  do 
without  itself.  Money  ought  to  be  making  us  indifferent 
to  money;  to  be  preparing  us  to  be  cheerfully  poor;  to 
be  building  tastes  and  powers  within  itself,  like  a  honfl« 


288  THE  SYMBOL  AND   HE  REALITY. 

within  a  scaffolding,  so  that  the  scaffolding  may  come 
down  and  the  house  still  stand.  For  how  many  of  our 
rich  men  is  their  wealth  doing  that ;  but  certainly,  if  his 
wealth  is  not  doing  that  for  a  man,  he  is  the  slave  of 
his  wealth  and  not  its  master. 

Or  take  another  symbol.  Praise  is  good.  To  be  ap- 
plauded by  our  fellow-men,  to  hear  our  ambitions  about 
ourselves  caught  up  by  their  testifying  cheers,  to  have 
our  own  best  hopes  for  our  own  lives  confirmed  by  their 
appreciation  of  us,  that  is  a  true  delight  for  any  man. 
To  be  able  to  do  without  men's  praise  because  we  do  not 
feel  its  value,  because  morosely  and  selfishly  we  do  not 
care  what  men  think,  that  is  bad ;  that  is  a  sign  of  fee- 
bleness and  conceit.  To  feel  it  is  wretched,  and  to  affect 
to  feel  it  is  detestable.  But  to  be  able  to  do  without 
men's  praise  because  that  which  their  praise  stands  for  is 
dearer  to  us  than  the  praise  is,  and  it  so  happens  that 
we  cannot  have  both  of  them,  that  is  a  wholly  different 
thing.  The  first  man  has  sunk  below  the  necessity  of 
men's  applause,  the  second  man  has  risen  above  it.  The 
poor,  demoralized  beggar  and  the  calm,  philosophic  ser- 
vant of  God,  standing  together  in  the  street,  neither  of 
them  may  care  much  whether  men  praise  or  blame  him, 
—  both  of  them  can  do  without  applause.  But  how  dif- 
ferent they  are.  Both  can  do  without  the  sunlight ;  but 
one  is  the  mole  crawling  out  of  sight  of  the  sun  under 
ground,  the  other  is  the  angel  who  lives  beyond  the  suu 
with  God.  For  men's  praise  stands  for  goodness.  Every 
man  feels  that  if  it  does  not  mean  that,  if  it  is  given  tc 
iniqaity  just  as  freely  as  to  goodness,  praise  loses  all  its 
value.  Praise  is  the  symbol ;  goodness  is  the  reality. 
But  if  we  cannot  let  the  praise  go  in  order  to  be  jrood. 


THE  SYMBOL  AND  THE  REALITY.  299 

if  we  dare  not  do  right  though  every  tongue  of  man 
broke  out  in  wild  abuse  of  us  together,  then  once  more 
the  symbol  has  us  in  its  tyranny.  We  are  not  its  mas- 
ters, ablt  to  do  without  it,  able  to  say  to  it  any  day, 
"Y:)U  may  go  now;  I  have  used  you  long  enough.  You 
have  done  all  that  you  can  for  me.  Now  you  are  begin- 
ning not  to  help  me,  but  to  harm  me."  We  are  its  ser 
vants,  only  daring  to  ask  of  it  humbly,  "  What  would 
you  have  me  do  that  I  may  more  completely  win  your 
favor,  O  praise  of  men  ?  " 

So  it  runs  everywhere.  The  symbols  of  the  deeper 
pleasures  are  the  mere  animal  indulgences,  —  eating  and 
drinking,  the  lusts  of  the  flesh.  They  stand  for  intellect- 
ual and  spiritual  joys.  How  natural  their  symbolism  is. 
The  Bible  talks  of  "  hungering  and  thirsting  after  right- 
eousness." David  says,  *'  Taste  and  see  that  the  Lord  is 
good."  Jesus  tells  His  disciples  about  "  eating  His  flesk 
and  drinking  His  blood."  The  superficial  emotions  of  the 
senses  stand  for  and  represent  the  profound  emotions  oi 
ihe  soul.  In  the  harmonious  life  the  two  will  live  in 
harmony.  The  symbol  and  reality,  the  body's  and  the 
soul's  enjoyment,  will  be  complete  together.  But  when 
in  this  unharmonious  life  in  which  we  live  the  symbol 
and  reality  come  into  unnatural  conflict,  when  either  the 
Boul  must  be  sacrificed  to  the  body  or  the  body  to  the 
soul,  he  who  really  knows  what  the  soul's  happiness  is 
ioes  not  hesitate.  He  is  able  to  do  without  the  sensual, 
delight.  He  can  be  hungry  and  thirsty,  and  deny  every 
lust  its  indulgence,  that  he  may  be  pure  and  true  and 
godly.  He  can  be  starved  and  famished  in  the  symbol, 
that  he  may  eat  and  drink  deep  of  the  reality.  You  say, 
*  I  cannot  do  it.     These  passions  at  least  must  have  their 


290  THE  SYMBOL  AND  THE  REAUTT. 

way.  I  was  made  so.  I  cannot  do  without  this  gratifica 
tion."  No,  certainly  not,  unless  you  can  come  to  what 
that  gratification  stands  for.  If  you  can  do  that ;  if  you 
can  really  see  the  beauty  of  goodness  and  purity,  and 
love  that ;  and  then  if  this  gratification  coming  in  con- 
flict with  them  means  sin,  then  you  can  easily  lose  it 
for  it  will  have  lost  its  charm  for  you.  Not  that  it  wiL 
seem  better  to  you  to  be  good  than  to  be  happy,  as  men 
sometimes  say,  but  the  only  possible  happiness  for  you 
will  be  in  being  good. 

You  see  that  I  am  speaking  not  only  of  things  that  are 
wrong  in  themselves.  Nay ;  I  am  speaking  mainly  of 
things  which  are  not  wrong  in  themselves,  but  which  the 
time  comes  for  a  man  to  do  without  because  he  cannot 
have  them  and  the  better  things  which  they  represent  to- 
gether. A  tree's  leaves  are  symbols  ;  they  mean  growth  ; 
they  stand  for  health  and  life  as  they  rustle  and  sparkle 
in  the  summer  wind  and  sunshine.  But  the  day  comes 
when  the  tree,  to  keep  its  healthy  life,  must  cast  its  leaves 
aside  and  stand  bare  and  naked  through  the  long  winter, 
losing  the  symbol  to  keep  the  reality.  A  man's  limbs 
mean  manhood.  They  stand  for  the  fact  of  his  manly 
strength  to  himself  and  to  the  world.  But  the  time 
comes  in  battle,  at  his  sentry  post,  when  the  man  must 
either  lose  his  limbs  or  lose  his  honor ;  and  then,  rather 
than  be  a  coward,  he  lets  a  part  of  himself  go ;  for  now 
to  be  maimed  and  not  to  be  complete  means  strength  and 
the  perfectness  of  manhood.  And  here  is  the  power  of 
true  self-sacrifice;  here  is  the  secret  which  takes  out  of  it 
all  the  bitterness  and  brutality.  Always  it  is  the  giving 
up  of  a  symbol  that  you  may  have  the  reality.  In  the 
gi-eat  sacrifice  of  all,  Christ  laj^s  down  His  life,  but  it  if 


THl  SYMBOL  AND  THE  REALITY.  291 

that  He  may  take  it  again.  Do  you  think  that  Christ 
did  not  care  for  life  and  all  that  makes  life  beautiful  to 
as  ?  Surely  He  did,  but  He  cared  more  for  that  which 
they  represent,  —  the  living  purely,  the  doing  of  His 
Father's  will,  and  the  serving  of  His  brethren.  That 
was  why  He  was  able  to  do  without  the  things  which 
seem  to  be  absolutely  essential  to  our  lives ;  because  He 
was  so  much  more  full  than  we  are  of  the  beauty  and 
glory  of  the  life  with  God.  That  was  the  power  by 
which  He  was  able  to  speak  harsh  words  when  He  would 
gladly  have  indulged  Himself  in  speaking  kind  and  soft 
words.  And  when  we  control  our  weak  good-nature,  and 
will  not  do  some  mere  indulgent  action  to  a  friend  or 
child,  in  order  that  we  may  help  that  child  or  friend  to 
some  manly  work  or  vigorous  self-control,  we  are  doing 
in  our  way  what  Jesus  did  when  He  surrendered  the 
mere  pleasure  of  pleasing  the  world  for  the  higher  and 
more  perfect  joy  of  saving  the  world. 

I  am  very  much  impressed  by  the  truth  of  all  this  as 
concerns  the  Christian  Church.  She  has  her  symbols  and 
her  ordinances,  and  she  has  her  true  and  inner  life.  Her 
outward  ways  of  living  really  belong  with  her  inward 
power.  In  a  perfectly  harmonious  world  there  never 
could  be  any  conflict.  In  Heaven  the  outward  and  the 
inward  church  shall  absolutely  correspond ;  but  here  and 
now  the  church  may  be  so  set  upon  her  symbols  and  her 
regularities  that  she  shall  fail  of  doing  her  most  perfect^ 
work  and  living  her  most  perfect  life.  The  Christian 
may  be  so  bound  to  rites  and  cere  aionies  that  he  loses  the 
God  to  whom  they  ought  to  bring  him  near.  The  con- 
gregation may  be  so  jealous  for  its  liturgy  that  it  loses 
the  power  of  prayer-     The  church  at  large  may  make  so 


ti»^  THE  SYMBOL  AND  THE  REALIT-J 

much  uf  its  apostolic  ministry  that  it  loses  the  preseni 
ministry  of  Christ  Himself.  Here  it  certainly  is  tru€ 
ihat  no  symbol  is  doing  its  true  work  unless  it  is  educat- 
ing those  who  use  it  to  do  without  itself,  if  need  be.  Th« 
Christian  is  misusing  his  rites  and  ceremonies,  unles? 
they  are  bringing  him  more  personally  and  immediately 
near  to  God.  The  congregation  is  not  using  its  liturgy 
aright  if  it  is  getting  more  and  more  unable  to  worship 
except  in  just  that  form  and  order ;  and  the  church  is  suf- 
fering and  not  thriving  by  her  ancient  ministry  if  she 
is  making  it  exclusive  and  mechanical,  and  calling  none 
the  ministers  of  Christ  who  have  not  that  ordination. 
Everywhere  the  letter  stands  for  the  spirit,  and  to  give 
ap  the  letter,  that  the  spirit  may  live  more  fully,  becomes 
from  time  to  time  the  absolute  necessity  of  the  living 
church. 

Have  I  then  made  clear  our  law?  Among  the  tests  of 
men  there  stands  very  high  this  power  to  do  without.  A 
man  says,  "  You  need  not  talk  to  me  about  this  luxury, 
this  habit.  The  time  may  come  when  I  shall  have  to 
sacrifice  my  principle  to  keep  it,  but  I  cannot  live  with- 
out it."  Another  man  says,  "  I  like  this,  but  I  despise 
the  thought  that  it  should  become  essential  to  me,  that  I 
should  not  be  able  to  do  without  it.  Are  not  those  two 
men  ranked  ?  Do  you  not  know  which  is  the  greater 
and  the  stronger,  which  is  the  smaller  and  the  weaker 
man?  But  then  this  power  of  doing  without  some  things 
is,  we  have  seen,  at  its  bottom  a  power  of  not  doing 
without  other  things.  We  are  rescued  from  the  abject 
slavery  of  the  lower  by  entering  into  the  absolute  ser- 
vantship  of  the  higher.  He  to  whom  honor  is  necessary 
can  dD  without  money.      He  who  mast  have  goodnesa 


THE  SYMBOL  AND  THE  BEAUTY.  29S 

can  get  along  without  praise.     He  who  must  have  God'a 
communion    can  do  vsdthout  the  sweet  companionships 
of   fellow-men.     He  who   cannot  lose  his   eternity  can 
easily  cast  aside  time  and  the  body  which  belongs  to 
it,  and  by  the  martyr's  slow  or  sudden  death  exchange 
the  visible  for  the  invisible,  the  symbol  for  the  reality. 
Nay,  he  who  raluess  most  intensely  his  friend's  or  hia 
child's  eternal  life  can,  not  easily  but  still  not  grudgingly, 
let  go  the  joy  and  daily  comfort  of  his  friend's  or  hia 
child's  hourly  presence,  and  see  him  die  that  he  may  enter 
into  Hfe.     On  these  two  ladders,  as  it  were,  by  these  two 
scales,  the  order  of  human  character  mounts  up,  —  the 
power  to  do  without  and  the  power  not  to  do  without. 
As  you  grow  better  there  are  some  things  which  are 
always  growing  looser  in  their  grasp  upon  you ;  there  are 
other  things  which  are  always  taking  tighter  hold  upon 
your  life.     You  sweep  up  out  of  the  grasp  of  money, 
praise,  ease,  distinction.     You  sweep  up  into  the  neces- 
sity of  truth,  courage,  virtue,  love,  and  God.     The  gravi- 
tation of  the  earth  grows  weaker,  the  gravitation  of  the 
stars  takes  stronger  and  stronger  hold  upon  you.     And 
on  the  other  hand,  as  you  grow  worse,  as  you  go  down, 
the  terrible  opposite  of  all  this  comes  to  pass.     The  high- 
est necessities  let  you  go,  and  the  lowest  necessities  take 
tighter  hold   of  you.     Still,  as   you  go  down,  you  are 
judged  by  what  you  can  do  without  and  what  you  can- 
not do  without.     You  come  down  at  last  where  you  can- 
not do  without  a  comfortable  dinner  and  an  easy  bed,  but 
you  can  do   without  an  act  of  charity  or  a  thought  of 
God.     The  poor  sot  finds  his  misery  sealed  with  this 
double  seal,  that  he  cannot  miss  his  glass  of  liquor,  and 
he  can  miss  without  a  sigh  every  gcod  company  and 
virtuous  wish. 


294  THE  SYMBOL  AND  THE  REALITl. 

Oh,  test  your  lives  by  this.  Judge  where  you  stand  by 
what  are  your  necessities.  Oh,  stretch  yourselves  and  see 
where  you  touch  your  chains,  and  thank  God  if  you  are 
really,  by  His  culture,  growing  more  and  more  able  tc 
spare  the  temporary  symbols,  less  and  less  able  to  do 
without  the  eternal  realities  of  hfe. 

But  now,  before  I  close,  let  me  try  to  answer  one  or 
two  questions  which  I  most  earnestly  hope  have  arisen  in 
some  of  your  minds  while  I  have  spoken.  I  think  that 
I  have  spoken  in  vain  unless  some  such  questions  have 
sprung  up.  First  you  will  ask,  How  can  I  tell  the  symbol 
from  the  reality,  and  so  know  what  things  it  is  good  to 
hold  less  and  less,  what  things  it  is  good  to  hold  more 
and  more  indispensable  ?  It  is  not  easy  to  give  the  an- 
swer in  a  rule.  But  the  answer  no  doubt  lies  in  a  certain 
feeling  of  spirituality  and  infiniteness  and  eternity,  which 
belongs  to  those  things  which  it  is  good  for  a  man  not  to 
be  able  to  do  without.  Those  things  which  serve  the 
soul  rather  than  the  body,  those  which  serve  the  whole 
of  us  and  not  one  special  part,  and  those  which  can  serve 
us  longest,  —  those  are  the  things  which  we  want  to  make 
more  and  more  indispensable.  Those  things  whose  use- 
fulness belongs  mainly  to  the  body,  those  things  which 
help  some  part  of  us  and  not  the  whole,  and  those  things 
whose  use  is  temporary,  —  it  is  not  good  for  any  of  us  to 
have  to  say,  "  I  cannot  do  without  these  things."  This 
is,  perhaps,  the  nearest  that  we  can  come  to  rules  ;  but 
he  who  lives  in  the  spirit  of  these  rules  acquires  a  cer- 
tain sort  of  feeling  of  the  infiniteness  of  some  things  and 
the  finiteness  of  others,  so  that  renown,  wealth,  dignity, 
sympathy,  comfort,  friendship,  amusement,  life,  stand  on 
one  side;  and  honor,  truth,  bravery,  purity,  love,  eter» 


THE  SYMBOL  AND  THE  REALITY.         296 

irty,  God,  stand  on  the  other.  These  last  he  must  have. 
Those  others  he  can  do  without.  The  moment  that  he 
touches  any  new  gift  he  can  tell  to  which  order  it  be- 
longs. 

But  then  you  say,  What  then  ?  When  I  have  felt  this 
difference,  when  I  know  what  things  I  must  not  allow  to 
become  indispensable  to  me,  what  shall  I  do  then  ?  Shall 
I  throw  all  those  things  away  ?  Shall  I  strip  my  life  in- 
stantly of  all  that  is  not  indispensable,  and  live  only  in 
those  things  which  I  cannot  live  without  ?  No ;  certainly 
not.  That  effort  to  cast  away  the  symbol  as  soon  as  it 
was  seen  to  be  a  symbol  has  been  the  source  of  much 
religious  unhappiness  and  failure,  and  of  much  of  tht 
wrong  kind  of  separation  between  religious  and  irrelig- 
ious life.  Not  to  give  up  the  symbol,  but  to  hold  it  as  f 
symbol,  with  that  looser  grasp  which  lets  its  inner  realitj 
escape  into  us,  and  at  the  same  time  makes  us  always 
ready  to  let  it  go  when  the  reality  shall  have  whollj' 
opened  from  it,  that  is  the  true  duty  of  the  Christian 
as  concerns  the  innocent  things  of  the  world.  That  was 
the  way  in  which  Jesus  always  seemed  to  be  holding 
friendship,  home,  nature,  and  His  own  human  life ;  never 
grasping  them  so  tightly  that  their  spiritual  meanings 
might  not  come  forth  from  them  freely,  nor  that  He 
could  not  give  them  up  when  a  higher  vocation  sum- 
moned Him.  The  Christian  is  a  man  in  the  world.  The 
difference  between  him  and  the  man  of  the  world  must 
not  be  in  sharp  separation  of  all  their  occupations.  It 
must  be  in  the  different  ways  in  which  they  hold  their 
worldly  things.  How  easily,  with  what  a  sense  of  mas- 
tery, you  hold  what  all  the  time  you  know  that  you  can  do 
without.     The  beggar,  the  ruined  man,  the  poor  womaiit 


296         THE  SYMBOL  AND  THE  REALITY. 

with  just  one  piece  of  money  left,  with  no  chance  to  get 
another  if  that  is  lost,  clutches  that  piece  of  money  tight, 
and,  casting  suspicious  looks  on  every  side,  hurries  along 
the  street.  The  rich  man,  with  his  balance  in  the  banks, 
holds  his  one  coin  lightly,  and  without  anxiety  parts  with 
it  with  an  easy  grace  for  luxury  or  charity.  That  is  the 
difference  between  the  religious  and  the  irreligious  use  of 
the  world.  The  Christian  works  by  your  side  in  busi- 
ness or  society,  but  do  not  think  that  business  is  to  him 
the  absorbing  anxiety,  or  society  the  feverish  race,  that  it 
is  to  you.  He  has  not  staked  his  everything  upon  their 
game.  He  can  afford  to  lose,  and  yet  go  away  calm  and 
with  the  infiniteness  of  his  life  untouched.  He  is  like 
Jesus,  whom  His  disciples  could  not  understand.  They 
said  unto  Him,  Master,  eat.  But  He  said  unto  them,  I 
have  meat  to  eat  that  ye  know  not  of.  Therefore  said 
the  disciples  one  to  another,  Hath  any  man  brought  Him 
aught  to  eat  ?  Jesus  saith  unto  them,  My  meat  is  to  do 
the  will  of  Him  that  sent  me,  and  to  finish  His  work. 
So  the  Christian,  with  larger,  looser  grasp,  holds  the 
things  of  earth  and  gathers  out  of  them  all  the  more  rich- 
ness and  strength  because  he  is  not  their  slave,  but  their 
master,  and  can  do  wdthout  them  if  his  higher  duties  or 
interests  shall  need  it. 

There  is  nothing  that  impresses  us  all  so  much  as  to 
see  another  man  easily  do  without  what  is  the  very  life 
of  our  Ufe.  "  This  man  has  not  my  money,"  you  say  | 
"  but  he  would  have  it  if  he  could.  He  goes  without  it 
only  because  he  cannot  get  it."  But  by  and  by  you  see 
another  man  put  money  which  he  might  ha\e  under  his 
feet,  and  for  the  sake  of  learning  or  religion  quietly  take 
ap  the  life  of  poverty.     That  startles  you.     You  cannot 


TrfE  SYMBOL  AND   THE  REALITY.  297 

.inderstand  it.  But  is  it  not  true  that  all  of  us  have  had 
3ur  best  revelations  of  the  value  of  things  out  of  just 
auch  sights  as  that;  have  had  our  false  despotic  standards 
thrown  off  their  pedestals  when  we  saw  a  nobler  man 
easily  neglect  them,  as  the  idol  fell  down  on  As  face 
when  the  ark  of  Jehovah  was  brought  into  the  house  of 
Dagon,  the  Philistine's  god  ? 

And  that  brings  us  to  the  last  question.  How  shall  I 
come  to  count  nothing  indispensable  but  what  I  really 
ought  to,  what  I  really  cannot  do  without?  The  answer 
to  that  question  is  in  Christ,  who  holds  the  answers  of 
all  our  questions  for  us.  As  I  read  the  Gospels  I  can  see 
how,  little  by  little,  Jesus  lifted  those  disciples  past  one 
conception  of  necessity  after  another,  until  at  last  they 
knew  nothing  that  was  absolutely  necessaiy  except  God. 
They  began  as  fishermen  who  could  not  do  without  theii 
nets  and  boats  and  houses  and  fishing  friends  and  sports 
and  gains  and  gossipings.  He  carried  them  up  till  they 
were  crying,  "  Lord,  show  us  the  Father,  and  it  sufficeth 
us."  That  wonderful  change  —  how  wonderful  it  was  we 
forget,  because  the  story  is  so  famihar—  He  brought  about 
by  showing  them  His  salvation.  When,  living  with  Him. 
they  saw  the  glory  of  forgiveness  and  regeneration,  saw 
the  new  life  that  opened  before  those  who  really  knew 
His  grace,  everything  changed  to  them.  It  was  not  so 
important  how  they  fared,  what  food  they  ate,  what  they 
wore,  how  many  fish  they  caught.  "  All  these  things  do 
the  nations  of  the  earth  seek  after."  To  them  the  ques- 
tions shifted.  The  tests  of  life  swept  higher  up.  Were 
they  indeed  His?  Had  they  caught  His  spirit?  Were 
they  living  His  life?  Had  they  part  in  His  eternity? 
And  so  when  you  and  I  really  desire  the  salvation   of 


£98         THE  SYMBOL  AND  THE  REAUTT. 

Christ,  He  will  do  for  us  all  that  He  did  for  them.  Oui 
tests  of  life,  too,  shall  sweep  up.  Not,  Is  my  body  well' 
but,  Is  the  soul  strong  ?  Not,  Is  my  friend  sure  to  live 
here  by  my  side?  but,  Is  he  living  with  God?  Not, 
Am  I  myself  sure  of  the  life  here  ?  but.  Am  I  already 
living  the  life  that  is  forever  ?  Health,  companionship, 
life  itself,  these  are  no  longer  indispensable  when  Christ 
has  shown  us  God.  A  resignation  that  is  not  despair, 
but  aspiration ;  a  looser  grasp  on  time,  that  means  how 
strongly  we  are  holding  to  eternity ;  this  must  come  to 
us  when,  after  all  our  doing  of  little  temporary  things, 
we  have  at  last  begun  in  Christ  the  life  and  work  that 
is  to  go  on  forever  and  forever.  Then  even  the  most  es- 
sential things  of  this  world  we  can  do  without,  if  need 
be.  We  have  passed  from  the  lower  to  the  higher  neces- 
sities. We  walk  by  faith,  and  not  by  sight.  Already, 
even  while  we  are  yet  in  the  flesh,  before  we  cross  the 
river,  the  promise  finds  its  fulfilment.  We  live  in  the 
world,  but  we  do  not  live  by  the  world.  Already  the 
sun  is  no  more  our  light  by  day  ;  neither  for  brightness 
does  the  moon  give  light  unto  us ;  but  the  Lord  is  unto 
M  %n  overcasting  light,  and  our  God  our  glory. 


xvn. 

CHKIST'S  WISH  FOS  MAN. 

"  Fatker,  (  will  that  they  also  whom  Thon  hast  given  me  be  wilk  U 
irhere  I  am ;  that  they  may  behold  my  glory."  —  John  xvii.  24. 

The  truth  that  men  are  judged  by  their  desires  jBnd* 
its  highest  illustration  in  Jesus.  The  perfection  of  His 
nature  is  shown  in  the  perfectness  of  His  wishes.  When 
His  desires  shall  be  all  fulfilled,  when  He  "  shall  see  of 
the  travail  of  His  soiil  and  be  satisfied,"  then  the  con- 
summation of  all  things  will  have  been  reached,  and 
there  will  be  nothing  more  in  the  universe  to  be  desired. 

Let  us  take  this  morning  one  of  Christ's  wishes  and 
study  it,  see  what  it  means,  and  what  would  be  the  effect 
;f  its  fulfilment.  It  is  a  prayer  ;  but  a  prayer  in  its  sim- 
plest definition  is  merely  a  wish  turned  Godward.  It 
was  the  instinct  of  Christ's  nature  that  He  looked  for 
the  fulfilment  of  His  vdshes,  not  to  Himself  and  not  to 
the  things  about  Him,  but  to  His  Father ;  and  so  in  Hia 
prayer  we  have  simply  the  utterance  Godward  of  what 
He  was  desiring  in  His  heart :  "  Father,  I  will  that  they 
also  whom  Thou  hast  given  me  be  with  me  where  I  am ; 
that  they  may  behold  my  glory." 

This  wish  was  spoken  at  Christ's  last  supper  with  His 
disciples.  They  were  sitting  late  around  their  simple 
table,  and  soon  their  separation  was  to  come,  the  be- 
txayal   and   the   cmcifixion.      The  first  inteiest  of  the 


800  CHRIST'S  WISH  FOR  MAN. 

words,  thMi,  that  which  introduces  us  to  and  makes  ni 
ready  for  all  the  deeper  things  which  they  express,  is 
their  obvious  meaning  as  an  expression  of  the  Saviour's 
affection  for  His  disciples.  His  dread  of  being  separated 
from  them.  When  friend  is  going  away  from  friend, 
how  naturally  the  wish  springs  up  into  words :  "  Oh,  if 
I  could  only  take  you  with  me  I  The  countiy  where  1 
am  going  may  be  very  bright ;  the  work  that  waits  me 
there  may  be  all-absorbing.  I  know  that  new  friend- 
ships will  be  ready  for  me  there ;  I  know  that  it  is  bet- 
ter for  you  to  tarry  here.  But  just  at  this  moment  all 
that  is  overflowed  by  one  desire  that  springs  out  of  our 
affectionate  companionship.  I  dread  to  be  separated 
from  you.  Oh,  that  you  might  be  with  me  where  I 
am."  Now  the  sublimity  and  the  charm  of  the  earthly 
life  of  Jesus  consist  in  large  part  in  the  broad  and 
healthy  action  of  the  simplest  human  powers  which  it 
exhibits.  It  is  not  in  anything  subtle  or  complicated. 
The  simplest  natures  are  the  grandest  natures  always. 
The  broad  perception  of  principles,  the  hearty  apprecia- 
tion of  character,  the  strong  feeling  and  frank  utterance 
of  emotion,  —  these  are  what  always  mark  the  truly 
greatest  men.  And  so  it  is  a  part  of  the  greatness  of 
Jesus  that  He  so  simply  feels  and  utters  this  cordial 
human  affection,  and,  as  He  looks  round  into  the  familiar 
faces  of  the  twelve,  says,  "  I  dread  to  leave  you  behind 
me.  I  shall  miss  you.  I  wish  you  could  go  with  me. 
I  will  that  you  should  be  with  me  where  I  am."  We 
want  not  merely  to  admire  this  in  Jesus ;  not  merely  to 
feel  its  charm.  We  want  to  catch  it  from  Him  ;  we  want 
to  let  it  reveal  to  ns  what  the  true  dignity  of  human  life 
ia.      Elaborate  civilization  is  always  making  elaborate, 


chbist's  wish  for  man.  301 

artificia.  standards.  To  be  acute  and  subtle  and  skil- 
ful in  some  specialized  working  of  the  mind,  to  be  secre- 
tive and  ingenious,  to  admire  nothing,  and  never  to  give 
way  to  the  affections,  —  those  are  the  dispositions  which  a 
complicated  life  is  always  setting  up  to  make  its  modem 
man.  Chriat  Jesus  lets  us  see  that  the  true  nobility  is  a 
broad  and  sensitive  nature,  lying  wide  open  to  the  influ- 
ences of  God,  easily  feeling  and  frankly  uttering  the  first 
true  emotions.  Let  us  try  to  catch  the  lesson  and  win 
something  of  His  unaffected  breadth  and  truth. 

But  now  we  go  on  farther.  These  primary  emotions 
do  exist  in  Jesus,  the  proof-marks  of  His  true  humanity, 
the  patterns  for  all  humanity ;  but  they  are  deeper  and 
richer  things  in  Him  than  in  ordinary  men,  in  propor- 
tion to  the  depth  and  richness  of  His  human  nature  and 
the  divinity  that  was  mingled  with  it.  This  is  what  we 
are  used  to  seeing.  The  same  emotion  exists  in  different 
men,  but  it  becomes  more  full  and  perfect  as  the  man 
is  more  and  greater.  The  color  deepens  with  the  body 
and  solidity  of  the  material  into  which  it  is  wrought. 
Fear  is  one  thing  for  a  coward  who  shakea  al  every  trem- 
bling leaf,  and  another  for  a  strong  man  who  looks  for- 
ward into  the  far  consequences  of  things,  and  trembles  at 
the  unrelenting  persistency  with  which  a  sin  dogs  the 
wrong-doer  to  his  punishment.  What  a  totally  different 
thing  scorn  is  in  the  feeble  sneer  of  the  cynic  and  in  the 
lofty  contempt  which  nobleness  has  for  meanness.  How 
Borrow  deepens  from  the  superficial  grief  of  a  superficial 
mourner  at  a  funeral,  all  tears  and  crape,  to  the  deep,  si- 
lent woe  that  settles  into  the  very  centre  of  a  strong,  lov- 
ing character,  and  makes  every  day  thenceforth,  till  death 
oomes  with  its  release,  different  from  all  the  days  that 


502  CHRIST  S   WISH   FOB  MAN. 

went  before.  Nowhere  is  all  this  more  true  than  about 
companionship.  For  two  beings  to  be  with  one  another 
always  means  the  same  simple  thing,  and  yet  its  meaning 
runs  up  through  all  the  ascending  scale  of  human  charao 
ter.  A  herd  of  brutes  are  satisfied  with  a  dim,  brutish 
pleasure  if  they  can  feed  in  the  same  field;  and  there 
is  a  human  brutishness,  an  animal  companionship  even 
among  men,  which  makes  them  like  to  be  with  one  an- 
other, to  sit  in  the  same  room,  to  walk  in  crowded  streets. 
It  is  not  bad  ;  it  is  healthy  ;  but  it  is  not  high.  It  is  the 
companionship  which  is  craved  by  the  most  superficial 
men,  and  by  the  most  superficial  part  of  all  of  us.  Next 
higher  than  that,  companionship  means  identity  of  work 
and  occupation.  To  be  with  another  man  means  to  en- 
gage in  the  same  tasks.  This  is  the  companionship  of 
business  men,  of  men  of  the  same  profession,  when  there 
is  nothing  more  personal  behind  their  professional  rela- 
tion. Next  higher  still  is  the  companionship  of  opinion, 
when  men  think  alike  and  so  are  thrown  into  the  advo- 
cacy of  the  same  measures  and  policies.  This  is  the  es- 
sence of  all  partisanship,  the  association  of  men  about 
a  common  thought,  however  different  may  be  their  rea- 
sons and  their  ways  of  thinking  it.  Beyond  all  these 
lies  the  highest  companionship,  which  is  companionship 
of  character,  a  sympathy  in  the  final  purposes  of  life,  a 
resemblance  in  fundamental  qualities,  which  is  so  essen- 
tial that  it  may  even  do  without  the  others,  and  may  ex- 
ist between  those  who  are  far  apart  in  place,  whose  works 
are  wholly  different,  and  who  hold  very  different  opinions. 
These  are  the  grades  of  human  companionship  :  physical 
neai-ness,  common  employment,  similar  opinions,  sympa- 
thy of  character.     According  as  the  man  mounts  from 


CHRIST'S   WISH  FOB  MAN.  803 

the  lowest  to  the  highest,  to  be  with  any  fellow-man 
comes  to  signify  to  him  successively  one  after  another  of 
these  things. 

"We  have  a  fine  illustration  of  the  desire  for  this  last 
and  highest  sort  of  companionship  in  the  famous  worda 
which  St.  Paul  said  to  the  governor,  Agrippa,  when  he 
was  on  his  trial  before  him.  From  the  beginning  of  the 
interview  we  can  see  that  Paul  was  attracted  to  Agrippa. 
Something  about  the  manner  of  the  magistrate  pleased 
his  prisoner.  At  last  Paul  is  led  on  to  express  his  feel- 
ing. "  I  would,"  he  says,  "  that  thou  and  all  who  hear 
me  were  altogether  such  as  I  am,  except  these  bonds." 
Those  words  seem  to  be  the  echo  of  his  Master's :  "I 
will  that  they  also  whom  Thou  hast  given  me  be  with 
me  where  I  am."  Paul  wanted  Agrippa.  From  the  dig- 
nity of  his  prisoner's  stand,  he  yearned  over  that  poor 
dissolute  who  was  seated  upon  the  throne.  "  I  want 
you,"  he  said  ;  "  I  want  you  to  be  with  me  ;  with  me  not 
in  place,  not  in  these  bonds,  —  I  do  not  ask  for  that.  Not 
in  my  work.  Your  work  is  different.  I  am  a  missionary 
and  you  are  a  king.  More  in  opinions,  though  not  prin- 
cipally in  those,  I  want  you  to  be  with  me.  I  irant  your 
companionship  in  character,  and  in  the  purposes  of  life." 
That  was  Paul's  wish  for  his  poor,  kingly  hearer.  He 
himself  was  dehghting  in  Christ.  Truths  which  had 
made  him  another  man,  hopes  that  filled  all  his  life  with 
]oy,  a  communion  with  God,  rich,  deep,  and  drowning 
every  sorrow  and  provocation  in  its  calm  and  mighty 
depths,  a  strength  against  temptation  that  filled  him 
with  hourly  peace,  —  all  these  he  had.  In  these  he 
lived,  and  when  he  saw  Agrippa  living  outside  of  all  of 
them,  he  said,  "  I  wish  that  you  were  living  here  with 


so  4  CHRIST'S  WISH  FOR  MAN. 

me."  He  added,  for  fear  that  they  might  misunderstand 
him,  holding  out  his  manacled  hands,  "  not  in  these 
chains."  But  for  himself  the  chains  would  not  have  oc- 
curred to  him.  It  was  not  in  them  that  he  lived.  He 
lived  in  the  obedience  and  the  communion  and  the  peace 
of  God.  There  was  where  he  wanted  Agrippa  to  come 
and  be  with  him. 

And  this  must  always  be  the  first  joy  of  any  really 
good  life,  its  first  joy  and  its  first  anxiety  at  once,  —  the 
desire  that  others  should  enter  into  it.  Indeed,  here  is 
the  test  of  a  man's  life.  Can  you  say,  "  I  wish  you  were 
like  me  "  ?  Can  you  take  your  purposes  and  standards  of 
living,  and  quietly,  deliberately  wish  for  all  those  who 
are  dearest  to  you  that  they  should  be  their  purposes 
and  standards  too  ?  If  you  are  a  true  Christian  you  can. 
If  you  are  trying  to  serve  Christ,  however  imperfect  be 
your  service,  still  you  can  say  to  your  child,  your  friend, 
"  I  wish  that  you  were  with  me  where  I  am,  on  this  good 
road  of  serving  Christ,  though  far  beyond  me  in  it."  But 
I  am  afraid  that  there  are  people  here  to^ay  whose  lives 
could  not  begin  to  stand  that  test.  I  am  afraid  there  are 
fathers  and  mothers  here  whose  first  and  strongest  prayer 
for  their  children  would  be  that  they  might  be  saved 
from  being  what  their  parents  are.  You  shut  your  chaiv 
acters  away.  With  awkward  hands  you  bring  out  virtues 
which  you  will  not  practise  yourself,  and  put  them  before 
your  children  and  say,  *'  These  are  good.  I  advise  yoo 
to  practise  these ; "  but  your  own  frivolity,  your  scepti* 
cism,  your  lust,  the  meanness  that  the  years  have  brought 
you,  the  self-indulgence  and  the  ignorance  into  which 
your  life  has  fallen,  these  places  where  you  live  your- 
self, you  do  not  want  to  have  your  children  with  yoa 


CHRIST'S  WISH   FOR  MAN.  805 

there ,  and  so  you  never  say  anything  of  those  places 
where  you  are  most  at  home,  and  steal  away  to  them 
when  you  think  your  children's  pure  eyes  are  not  upon 
you.  Oh,  what  a  condemnation  of  a  man's  life  is  that 
It  is  not  good  for  a  man  to  be  living  any  life  which 
lie  would  not  desire  to  see  made  perfect  and  universal 
through  the  world.  Paul  says,  "Be  what  I  am;"  but 
Dives  cries  out  of  the  fire  where  he  lies,  "  Oh,  send  and 
warn  my  seven  brethren  lest  they  come  where  I  am  I " 
The  dying  Christian  tells  those  beside  him  of  the  blessed- 
ness of  serving  Christ.  The  dying  murderer  with  his 
last  breath  warns  men  from  the  scaffold  not  to  be  what 
he  has  been.  Oh,  test  your  lives  thus  I  Do  not  consent 
to  be  anything  which  you  would  not  ask  the  soul  that  is 
dearest  to  you  to  be.  Be  nothing  which  you  would  not 
wish  all  the  world  to  be  I 

Thus,  then,  we  understand  Christ's  longing  for  the 
companionship  of  His  disciples.  He  wanted  them  to  be 
with  Him.  That  wish  of  His  must  have  run  through  all 
the  scale  of  companionship  which  we  have  traced  ;  but  it 
must  have  completed  itself  in  the  desire  that  they  should 
bo  like  Him,  that  they  should  have  His  character,  that  in 
the  obedience  and  communion  of  God,  where  He  abode, 
they  should  abide  with  Him.  I  do  not  think  that  we 
can  tell  how  much  it  signifies,  this  wish  of  Jesus,  in  its 
lower  meaning  of  physical  companionship.  I  am  sure  it 
does  mean  something.  I  am  sure  that  in  the  Bible  some- 
thing is  promised,  some  close,  perpetual  association  of 
the  souls  of  Christ's  redeemed  to  Him,  which,  over 
and  above  the  likeness  which  is  to  come  between  their 
souls  and  His,  shall  correspond  in  some  celestial  way  to 
that  elose,  visible,  tangible  propinquity  with  which  they 


S06  chbist's  wish  fob  man. 

sat  by  one  another  at  the  table  in  the  upper  chambei. 
The  "  seeing  Hia  face,"  the  "  walking  with  Him  in 
white,"  in  heaven,  are  not  wholly  figures.  What  they 
mean  those  know  to-day  who  through  the  lapsing  years 
iiave  gone  from  us,  one  by  one,  to  be  with  Christ.  But 
yet  God's  guidance  I  doubt  not  it  is  which  more  and 
more  in  these  days  has  drawn  the  minds  of  Christians  to 
think  of  heaven  less  as  a  place  than  as  a  character.  Cer- 
tainly one  of  the  strongest  characteristics  of  our  time  has 
been  a  sensible  diminishing  of  the  attempt  to  realize  the 
blessedness  of  the  occupations  and  the  beauty  of  the 
landscapes  of  the  other  life,  and  an  increase  of  the  con- 
viction that  the  essence  of  its  happiness  must  be  in  holi- 
ness, and  that  the  soul  consecrated  to  holiness  might  well 
forget  even  to  ask  where  it  was  to  dwell  and  what  it  was 
to  do  forever.  What  "  place  "  may  mean  in  that  other  life 
we  cannot  even  conjecture  till  we  know  something  of  the 
nature  of  the  spiritual  body  in  which  we  are  to  live  ;  and, 
paint  the  place  as  definitely  and  as  brilliantly  as  we  will, 
still  it  would  make  it  earth,  not  heaven,  if  it  should  be 
conceived  of  apart  from  spiritual  fitnesses,  as  gratifying 
or  satisfying  the  soul  of  its  inhabitant.  "  Coelum  patria, 
Christus  via,"  says  the  old  motto :  "  Heaven  the  coun- 
try, Christ  the  way."  But  it  is  true  that  He  who  is  the 
way  is  also  the  life  into  which  the  way  leads  ;  and  Christ 
must  be  country  as  well  as  path.  Much  of  the  corruption 
of  religion,  the  foul,  bad  lives  into  which  men  have  fallen, 
while  all  the  time  they  thought  that  they  were  living 
most  religiously,  have  come  just  here.  Men  have  thought 
that  they  could  be  with  Christ  without  being  in  Christ ; 
that  they  could  have  His  blessings  and  not  share  Hii 
character.    Christ  himself  )nctured  the  arrival  of  the  d«- 


CHBIST'S  WISH  FOB  MAN.  807 

laded  company  at  the  gates  of  their  misimagined  heaven. 
"  Master,"  they  said,  "  we  have  eaten  and  drunk  in  Thy 
presence,  and  Thou  hast  taught  in  our  streets."  And 
then  He  answered  them,  "  I  never  knew  you.  Depart 
from  me,  all  ye  workers  of  iniquity."  Oh,  my  deal 
friends,  let  us  beware  of  such  delusion.  Let  us  watch 
and  guard  against  it.  When  is  our  Master's  prayer  ful- 
filled for  us  ?  When  are  we  with  Jesus  where  He  is  ? 
Not  when  we  say  His  name  most  loudly.  Not  when  we 
crowd  into  the  very  centre  of  His  church.  Not  when 
we  come,  if  such  a  thing  be  possible,  to  some  super- 
nal region  where  with  new  sort  of  visibility  He  walks 
among  a  people  who  see  Him  in  the  new  as  men  once 
saw  Him  in  the  old  Jerusalem.  Never,  never  are  we 
with  Christ  till  we  are  like  Him.  Not  till  He  is  formed 
in  us  do  we  enter  truly  into  Him. 

But  let  us  look  a  little  at  the  next  clause  of  this  verse 
of  ours.  It  will  carry  out  and  make  more  forcible,  I 
think,  the  thoughts  on  which  we  have  been  dwelling. 
Jesus  says,  "  Father,  1  will  that  they  also  whom  Thou 
hast  given  me  be  with  me  where  I  am  ;  that  they  may 
behold  my  glory."  That  is  what  He  wants  them  to  be 
with  Him  for  :  "  that  they  may  behold  my  glory."  Per* 
haps  it  sounds  to  us  a  little  strange  at  first.  The  words 
almost  suggest  the  vulgar  craving  for  display  and  admira- 
tion which  is  familiar  enough  to  us  among  our  ordinary 
fellow-men.  The  school-boy  wants  his  school-fellow  to 
come  home  with  him  that  he  may  see  the  state  in  which 
his  father  lives.  The  American  says  to  the  foreigner, 
"  Come,  see  our  land,  its  vastness,  its  resources,  its  prog- 
ress." The  Christian  says,  "  Come  to  my  church.  You 
shall  see  how  elaborately  and  tastefully  we  pray;  yon 


808  CHRIST'S  WISH   FOR  MAN. 

shall  hear  our  music  ;  you  shall  admire  our  piety."  And 
then  comes  the  prayer  of  Jesus,  "  Father,  I  want  them 
to  be  with  me,  that  they  may  see  my  glory."  Before 
the  words  can  be  cut  entirely  free  from  low  associationt 
and  soar  into  the  high,  pure  meaning  which  belongs  to 
them,  we  must  remember  what  Christ's  glory  is  which 
He  wants  us  to  see.  Its  essence,  the  heart  and  soul  ol 
it,  must  be  His  goodness.  Again,  what  outward  splendor 
may  clothe  Christ  eternally  we  cannot  know,  in  our  deep 
ignorance  of  the  very  conditions  of  life  in  the  spiritual 
world  where  He  abides.  But  this  we  are  sure  of,  that 
in  at  its  very  centre  and  heart  the  glory  of  God  must  is- 
Bue  from  and  consist  in  the  goodness  of  God,  not  in  His 
power.  It  is  the  very  purpose  of  religion,  it  is  the  bat- 
tle that  Christianity  has  been  fighting  with  the  stand- 
ards of  the  world  for  all  these  centuries,  to  make  men 
know  that  power  without  goodness  is  not  really  glorious. 
And  we  must  not  apply  to  God  a  standard  from  which 
we  are  always  trying  to  disenchant  ourselves  as  concerns 
our  fellow-men.  In  Him,  too,  nothing  but  goodness  can 
be  really  glorious  in  the  eyes  of  moral  creatures.  His 
power  is  the  emphasis  set  upon  His  goodness ;  the  brill- 
iant light  thrown  through  the  perfect  window,  showing 
the  window's  glory,  not  its  own.  Other  creations  which 
are  not  moral,  the  brutes  and  the  inanimate  universe,, 
may  praise  the  glory  of  mere  power.  It  is  the  preroga- 
tive of  our  morality  that  only  in  a  moral  character  can 
it  discover  the  glory  that  shall  call  out  its  fullest  adonv 
tion.  It  is  Christ's  goodness,  then,  that  He  would  have 
His  people  see.  Think  for  a  moment  of  what  prospects 
that  wish  of  our  Lord  opens.  That  we  may  see  Hia 
goodness  perfectly  I     Nowadays  men  are  telling  one  an- 


CHRIST'S  WISH  FOB  MAN.  SOS 

•ther  how  tired  they  are  of  seeing  sin  on  every  side  of 
them,  —  unrighteousness,  impurity,  corruption.  "  You 
cannot  open  your  eyes,"  they  say,  "  but  one  or  the  othex 
of  these  things  is  staring  you  horribly  in  the  face."  We 
cheat  ourselves  if  we  think  that  it  is  peculiar  to  oui 
times,  for  it  has  always  been  so.  We  cheat  ourselw  i  il 
we  think  that  it  is  universal,  for  there  is  goodness,  bright 
and  glorious  goodness,  around  us,  mixed  with  the  si)  on 
every  side.  But  yet  there  is  unrighteousness  enougl  to 
make  our  hearts  sad  and  weary.  I  pity  from  my  hf^ri 
the  man  who,  in  the  midsc  of  the  corruption  all  ab-^ut 
nim,  has  it  not  in  his  power  to  turn,  and,  for  refreshment 
and  relief,  look  at  the  goodness  of  Jesus  Christ.  There 
stands  what  we  have  searched  for  in  vain.  It  rests  and 
renews  our  failing  courage,  it  makes  us  men  again, 
with  hope  for  humanity,  when  we  turn  and  see  Hia 
goodness.  But  how  imperfectly  we  see  it !  How  much 
goodness  there  must  be  in  Him  which  we  do  not  see ! 
For  here  this  truth  comes  in,  that  in  these  moral  things 
only  the  like  can  see  its  like ;  only  the  good  can  really  dis- 
cern, appreciate,  and  understand  goodness.  That  needs 
no  proof.  We  see  it  every  day.  Men  live  alongside 
of  the  best  saints  the  world  possesses,  do  business  with 
them,  pass  their  whole  lives  with  them,  and  never  know 
that  they  are  good.  If  we  have  ever  made  any  ad- 
Tance  in  purity  and  unselfishness,  has  not  the  best  of  aU 
its  satisfaction  been  in  this,  that  it  has  let  us  see  some* 
thing  new  of  the  self-sacrifice  and  purity  in  other  men 
which  had  been  hidden  from  us.  The  higher  we  climb, 
the  more  the  peaks  open  around  us.  Now  apply  all  this 
to  the  Saviour's  prayer  that  we  may  see  His  glory.  Hia 
glory  ia  His  goodness.     Only  by  growth  in  goodness  can 


SlO  cheist's  wish  fob  man. 

His  goodness  open  itself  to  us.  What  is  He  praying 
for  then  ?  Is  it  not  that  which  we  traced  Lefore  in  the 
first  part  of  His  prayer,  the  same  exactly,  that  we  might 
be  like  Him?  So  only  can  we  see  Him.  It  is  His  glorj 
that  He  wants  us  to  see,  but,  back  of  that,  He  wants  ub 
to  be  such  men  and  women  that  we  can  see  His  glory. 

I  think  of  Jesus  as  He  walked  through  Jerusalem. 
Men  passed  Him  by  ;  some  never  looked  at  Him  ;  othera 
just  looked  at  Him,  and  sneered,  and  went  their  way. 
Do  you  think  that  did  not  give  Him  pain?  Surely  it 
did.  It  stung  Him  deep  with  sorrow,  that  men  would 
not  understand  Him.  They  could  not  see  His  glory. 
But  was  His  pain  for  Himself  ?  Was  it  that  His  glory 
needed  their  recognition  ?  Was  it  not  for  them  ?  Was 
it  not  that  He  saw  them  incapable  of  apprehending  Him  ? 
Was  it  not  over  their  low  perceptions,  their  earthliness, 
their  love  of  what  was  bad,  their  hate  of  what  was  good, 
that  He  lamented  ?  Was  not  this  what  He  was  really 
mom-ning  for  when  He  sat  on  the  Mount  of  Olives,  and 
looked  down  upon  Jerusalem  ?  Not  for  Himself,  but  for 
the  city  which  had  rejected  Him.  Not,  "  Woe  is  me  I 
woe  is  me  1 "  but,  "  O  Jerusalem,  Jerusalem  I  " 

Sometimes,  my  friends,  in  very  far  off  way,  it  is  given 
to  a  man  to  echo  this  experience  of  Jesus.  Sometimes  a 
man  is  pure,  honest,  just,  living  for  the  good  of  other 
people,  and  other  people  will  not  see  it.  He  knows  him- 
self; he  is  sure  that  no  base  motive  mingles  with  the 
acts  he  does.  But  men  fail  to  understand  him,  and  he 
is  left  to  sit  upon  the  mountain  and  look  down  in  sor- 
row upon  the  city  which  he  longs  to  save.  At  such  a 
time  a  man  wants,  and  often  enough  he  fails  to  get,  the 
■pirit  of  Christ's  prayer.     He  wants  men  to  "  eee  Hit 


chbist's  wish  fob  man.  311 

glory,"  and  they  will  not.  Is  it  for  himself  or  foi  them 
that  he  is  disappointed  ?  Is  it  his  dishonor  or  theii 
blindness  that  stings  him  ?  The  man  whom  yon  helped 
yesterday  and  who  ungratefully  slanders  you  to-day,  are 
you  indignant  about  yourself  or  pitiful  over  him  ?  The 
man  who  is  going  up  and  down  the  town  telling  slanders 
about  you,  what  is  the  feeling  with  which  you  upbraid 
his  misrepresentation  ?  It  is  hard  to  keep  out  pride  and 
jealousy,  but  if  we  ever  find  ourselves  where  anything 
like  Christ's  experience  comes  home  to  us,  let  us  remem- 
ber how  He  wanted  men  to  see  Him  because  it  was  so 
wretched  for  them,  not  for  Him,  that  they  should  be 
blind  to  Him ;  in  simple,  manly  honesty,  let  us  try  to 
make  men  see  what  we  are  doing,  not  because  we  are 
provoked  at  being  misunderstood,  but  because  it  is  not 
good  for  them  not  to  be  capable  of  seeing. 

I  think  then  that  we  have  reached  the  meaning  of  this 
prayer  of  Jesus ;  and  we  are  struck  immediately  by  see- 
ing how  it  really  is  identical  with  all  His  prayers  for 
men.  In  various  words,  under  various  figures,  Christ  is 
the  intercessor,  always  offering  prayers  for  men,  but  all 
His  prayers  resolve  themselves  into  the  same  wish,  aU 
are  asking  for  the  one  same  thing.  It  is  always  that  men 
might  be  saved  from  sin,  that  His  goodness  might  come 
to  us  and  we  might  be  good.  There  is  something  very 
impressive,  I  think,  about  this,  as  it  becomes  more  and 
more  plain  to  us.  I  hear  God  at  work  everywhere  on 
tb3  lives  of  men.  Wherever  I  go  I  hear  men  answering 
to  some  touch  of  His.  They  may  not  know  that  it  is 
His  touch  which  they  are  answering ;  but  one  who  be- 
lieves in  Him  knows  that  these  things  about  us  are  not 
all  doing  themselves,  but  He  does  them.     I  pass  one 


312  CHRIST'S  WISH   FOR   MAN. 

man's  door  and  laughter  comes  ringing  out.  God  is  send- 
ing joy  into  that  house.  I  pass  another,  and  I  hear  the 
sound  of  smothered  sobs.  God  has  sent  pain,  perhaps  has 
Bent  death,  there.  One  man  is  striiggling  with  doubta 
«rhich  God  has  sent  him.  Another  man  is  walking  in 
the  brightness  of  unclouded  faith.  Has  God  a  hundred 
purposes  for  all  these  men?  Our  truth  to-day  is  that 
He  has  but  one  purpose  for  them  all.  He  is  trying  to 
make  these  men  true  and  holy.  He  is  doing  this  for  ail 
of  them,  and  He  is  doing  nothing  else  save  as  a  means  to 
this  for  any  of  them.  Men  stumble  so  before  they  get 
hold  of  that  truth.  They  complain  that  God  does  not  do 
this  and  that  and  the  other  thing  for  them,  which  He 
never  undertook  to  do.  They  say,  "  He  does  not  make 
me  rich.  He  does  not  fill  my  life  with  friendships."  So 
they  flutter  about  with  their  complainings  as  a  bird  will 
sweep  this  way  and  that,  doubtful  and  wandering  and 
tempted  on  every  side.  But  as  at  last  the  bird  catches 
sight  of  the  home  where  it  belongs,  though  very  far  away, 
and  all  its  flutterings  cease,  and  setting  itself  straight 
towards  that,  it  steadies  itself  and  seeks  it  without  a 
single  turn  aside ;  so  by  and  by  one  of  these  wanderers 
among  many  hopes  discovers  far  away  the  hope,  the  one 
only  hope,  for  which  God  made  him,  and  forgetting  every- 
thing else  thenceforth  gives  himself  to  that,  to  serve  God 
and  by  serving  Him  to  grow  into  His  goodness. 

This  was  the  prayer  of  Jesus,  His  only  prayer,  remem 
berl  He  asked  His  Father  simply  for  this,  that  those 
whom  He  loved  might  come  to  Him  in  spiritual  likeness. 
We  Tiee  stilL  in  our  religious  talk,  the  words  which  ex- 
press what  Christ  desired,  but  too  often  they  have  ao- 
qaired  some  small  meaning  and  degenerated  into  cant. 


CHRIST  S   WISH  FOR  MAN.  313 

And  lost  the  largeness  and  purity  of  meaning  with  which 
Jesus  used  them.  We  talk  about  a  woridly  man  being 
"far  from  Christ."  Men  mean  by  that  too  often  some- 
thing  technical,  something  narrow;  the  not  having  un- 
deri;aken  certain  ceremonies,  or  passed  through  ceri;ain  ex- 
periences. But  how  much  the  words  really  mean.  What 
a  terrible  thing  it  is  to  be  really  "  far  from  Christ."  To 
be  far  from  purity  is  to  be  impure.  To  be  far  from  spir- 
ituality is  to  be  sensual.  To  go  away  from  the  light  is 
to  go  into  the  outer  darkness.  Not  to  be  "with  Him 
where  He  is,"  is  to  be  away  from  Him  where  He  is  not, 
where  sin  is  and  the  misery  that  belongs  with  sin.  And 
then  that  other  phrase,  which  we  use  so  often  :  "  Coming 
nearer  and  nearer  to  Christ,"  we  say;  that  does  not  mean 
creeping  into  a  refuge  where  we  can  be  safe.  It  means 
becoming  better  and  better  men ;  repeating  His  charac- 
ter more  and  more  in  ours.  The  only  true  danger  is  sin, 
and  80  the  only  true  safety  is  holiness.  What  a  sub- 
lime ambition !  How  it  takes  our  vague,  half-felt  wishes 
and  fills  them  with  reality  and  strength,  when  the  moral 
growth,  which  makes  a  man  complete,  is  put  before  us, 
not  abstractly,  but  in  this  picture  of  the  dearest  and 
noblest  being  that  our  souls  can  dream  of,  standing  be- 
fore us  and  saying  to  us,  "  Come  unto  me ; "  standing 
over  us  and  praying  for  us,  "  Father,  bring  them  where 
I  am." 

That  was  Christ's  prayer.  He  prayed  it  at  the  Pass- 
over table.  The  next  day  He  prayed  it  in  all  the  silent 
appeal  of  His  suffering  upon  the  Cross.  "I,  if  I  be  lifted 
up,  will  draw  all  men  unto  me."  The  cross  was  Christ's 
supreme  utterance  of  His  longing  that  all  men  might  be 
rescued  out  of  %in  and  brought  to  hoUness.     As  we  stand 


314  CHRIST'S   WISH   FOR  MAN. 

and  see  Him  suffer,  one  thought,  one  cry  alone  arises  in 
our  hearts.  Oh,  how  He  must  have  wanted  to  save  us  ! 
How  terrible  sin  must  have  seemed  to  Him !  How  glori- 
ous holiness  must  have  seemed,  that  such  a*  prayer  as 
this  sacrifice  of  Himself  should  thus  have  gone  up  to  God 
for  our  salvation  1 

Here  let  me  close.  It  certainly  would  make  it  harder 
lOr  us  to  do  wrong  this  coming  week,  easier  to  do  what  is 
right,  harder  to  be  selfish,  easier  to  be  Christ-like,  if  this 
week  we  could  constantly  hear  Christ  praying  for  us  that 
we  might  be  with  Him  where  He  is.  That  prayer  would 
draw  us  to  Him,  into  His  life,  into  His  character,  and 
make  this  week  a  foretaste  of  that  eternity  whose  prom- 
ised glory  is  that  there  we  are  to  be  "  forever  with  the 
Lord." 


xvra. 

THE  SHORTNESS  OF  LIFE. 

"  Brethren,  the  time  is  short."  —  1  Cob.  rii  19. 

The  tone  in  which  a  man  speaks  often  helps  ns  to 
understand  his  meaning  quite  as  much  as  the  actual 
words  he  says.  And  with  a  great  and  sincere  writer 
there  is  a  tone  in  writing  as  well  as  in  speaking,  some- 
thing which  gives  an  intonation  to  the  words  he  writes, 
and  lets  us  understand  in  which  of  several  possible  spirits 
he  has  written  them.  "  Brethren,  the  time  is  short," 
writes  St.  Paul  to  the  Corinthians,  and  there  is  no  tre- 
mor of  dismay  or  sadness  in  his  voice.  He  was  in  the 
midst  of  work,  full  of  the  interest  and  joy  of  living,  hold- 
ing the  reins  of  many  complicated  labors  in  his  hands, 
and  he  quietly  said,  "This  is  not  going  to  last  long. 
Very  soon  it  will  be  over."  It  is  what  men  often  say 
to  themselves  with  terror,  clutching  the  things  which 
they  hold  all  the  more  closely,  as  if  they  would  hold  on 
to  them  forever.  There  is  nothing  of  that  about  St. 
Paul.  And  on  the  other  hand,  there  is  nothing  of  mor- 
bidness or  discontent,  no  rejoicing  that  the  time  is  short, 
and  wishing  that  it  was  still  shorter.  There  is  no  hatred 
of  life  which  makes  him  want  to  be  away.  There  is  no 
mad  impatience  for  the  things  which  lie  beyond.  There 
is  simply  a  calm  and  satisfied  recognition  of  a  fact. 
There  Ib  a  reasonable  sense  of  what  is  good  and  daar  in 


316  THE  SHORTNESS  OF  LIFE. 

life,  and  yet,  at  the  same  time,  of  what  must  lie  beyond 
life,  of  what  life  cannot  give  us.  It  is  as  when  the  same 
pen  wrote  those  sublime  and  simple  words,  "  This  cor- 
ruptible must  put  on  incorruption.  This  mortal  must  put 
on  immortality  ;  "  the  quiet  statement  of  a  great,  eternal 
necessity,  at  which  the  wise  man  must  feel  the  same  kind 
of  serious  joy  as  that  with  which  he  follows  the  move- 
ments of  the  stars,  and  looks  to  see  day  and  night  inevi- 
tably give  place  to  one  another.  Or  it  is  like  that  calm, 
majestic  weighing  of  two  worlds  over  against  each  other, 
"ind  letting  his  will  lie  in  even  balance  between  them, 
cordially  waiting  the  will  of  God,  with  which  the  same 
Paul  wrote  again,  "  I  am  in  a  strait  betwixt  two,  having 
a  desire  to  depart  and  to  be  with  Christ,  which  is  far 
better :  nevertheless,  to  abide  in  the  flesh  is  more  needful 
for  you :  and  having  this  confidence,  I  know  that  I  shall 
abide."  Or,  again,  it  is  like  the  healthy  satisfaction  of 
the  healthy  boy  in  his  boyhood,  knowing  all  the  time  the 
manhood  that  awaits  him,  feeling  his  boyhood  pressed 
upon  by  it,  hoping  for  it  and  expecting  it,  but  living 
now  in  the  concentrated  happiness  and  work  of  the  years 
whose  activity  and  pleasure  is  all  the  more  intense  be- 
cause of  the  sense  that  it  must  end. 

It  does  not  matter  what  St.  Paul  was  thinking  of  when 
he  said  the  time  was  short.  He  may  have  had  his  mind 
upon  the  death  which  they  were  all  approaching.  He 
may  have  thought  of  the  coming  of  Christ,  which  he 
Beems  to  have  expected  to  take  place  while  he  was  yet 
aUrs.  I  do  not  think  we  can  be  certain  which  it  was. 
And  perhaps  the  very  vagueness  about  this  helps  us  to 
his  meaning.  For  he  is  not,  evidently,  dwelling  upon  the 
nature  of  the  event  which  is  to  limit  the  "  time,"  only 


THE  SHORTNESS   OF  LIFE.  817 

opon  the  simple  fact  that  there  is  a  limit ;  that  the  period 
of  earthly  life  and  work  lies  like  an  island  in  the  midst 
of  a  greater  sea  of  being,  the  island  of  time  in  the  ocean 
of  a  timeless  eternity ;  and  that  it  is  pressed  upon  and 
crowded  into  littleness  by  the  infinite.  Not  the  shore 
where  the  sea  sets  the  island  its  limits,  but  only  the 
Island  in  the  sea,  hearing  the  sea  always  on  its  shores  • 
not  the  experience  by  which  this  life  should  pass  into  an- 
other, but  only  the  compression  and  intensifying  of  this 
Ufe  by  the  certainty  that  there  is  another ;  not  death,  but 
the  shortness  of  life — that  is  what  his  thoughts  are  fixed 
upon,  and  it  is  this  of  which  the  best  men  always  think 
the  most. 

Our  theme  is  this,  then  —  the  shortness  of  human  life. 
How  old  that  theme  is,  how  trite,  and  oftentimes  how 
dreary.  As  we  look  back  and  listen  we  hear  all  the  gen  - 
srations  wearisomely  wasting  their  little  span  of  life  in 
doleful  lamentations  that  it  is  not  longer.  Trite  lessons 
which  nobody  loves  to  learn ;  dull  poems  which  no  man 
can  sing ;  efforts  at  resignation  which  do  not  succeed,  — 
these  are  what  come  flocking  up  about  the  truth  that 
life  is  short.  It  is  the  ghost  at  the  banquet  of  human 
thought.  It  is  the  monotonous,  miserable  undertone  that 
haunts  all  the  bustle  and  clatter  of  men's  work  and  all 
the  gay  music  of  their  pleasure-making.  I  wish  that  I 
could  read  its  truth  to  you  in  another  tone  and  paint  its 
picture  in  another  color.  I  wish  that  I  could  make  you 
hear  it,  as  it  seems  as  if  Paul's  Corinthians  must  have 
heard  it,  almost  like  a  trumpet,  —  a  call  to  work  and  joy. 
If  we  can  catch  his  spirit  at  all,  something  of  that  may 
certainly  be  possible. 

And  first,  then,  let  us  ask.  What  is  the  shortness  of 


818  THE  SHORTNESS  OF  LIFE. 

(ife  ?  What  do  we  mean  by  life's  being  short  ?  Ther« 
is  a  little  insect  that  crawls  upon  the  trees,  and  creeps,  in 
one  short  day  of  ours,  through  all  the  experiences  of  life 
from  birth  to  death.  In  a  short  twenty-four  hours  his 
life  begins,  matures,  and  ends,  —  birth,  youth,  activity, 
age,  decrepitude,  all  crowded  and  compressed  into  these 
moments  that  slip  away  uncounted  in  one  day  of  our  hu- 
man life.  Is  his  life  long  or  short  ?  Is  our  life  long  or 
ghort  to  him  ?  If  he  could  realize  it  by  any  struggle  of 
his  insect  brain,  what  an  eternity  our  threescore  years 
and  ten  must  seem  to  him  I  And  then  lift  up  your  eyes, 
aft  up  your  thoughts,  and  think  of  God.  What  look  has 
any  life  that  has  any  limits  to  Him  ?  Nothing  short  of 
eternity  can  seem  long  to  Him.  He  sees  the  infant's 
life  flash  like  a  ripple  into  the  sunlight  of  existence  and 
vanish  almost  before  the  eye  has  caught  it.  And  He 
sees  Methuselah's  slow  existence  creep  through  its  nine 
hundred  and  sixty-nine  years,  and  find,  at  last,  the  grave 
which  had  stood  waiting  so  long.  Is  there  a  real  differ- 
ence in  the  length  of  these  two  lives  to  Him  ?  A  little 
longer  ripple  is  the  life  of  the  patriarch  than  was  the 
life  of  the  baby,  that  is  all.  And  what  do  we  mean  then 
by  the  shortness  of  our  human  life  ?  To  the  ephemera 
it  looks  like  an  eternity ;  to  God  it  looks  like  an  instant. 
Evidently  these  attributes  of  length  and  shortness  must 
be  relative ;  they  are  not  absolute.  How  shall  human 
life  seem  then  to  man  ?  Must  it  not  depend  altogether 
upon  where  he  stands  to  look  at  it  ?  If  he  stands  with 
the  ephemera,  his  life  looks  long  to  him.  If  he  stands 
with  God,  his  life  looks  short  to  him.  If  a  man  is 
able,  that  is,  to  conceive  of  immortality ;  if  he  can 
picture  to  himself  a  being  who  can  live  f  Drever  •  if  he 


THE   SHORTNESS   OF  LIFE,  '61 J 

lecogDizes  in  himself  any  powers  whi-^h  can  outlast  and 
laugh  at  death,  —  then  any  limit  of  life  must  seem  nar- 
row; against  the  broad  background  of  the  whole,  any 
part  must  seem  small.  On  the  blue  sky  the  almost  mill 
ion  miles  of  the  sun's  breadth  seem  narrow.  It  is  here 
that  tne  truth  about  the  matter  lies.  It  is  only  by  the 
dim  sense  of  his  immortality,  only  by  the  divine  sight  of 
himself  as  a  being  capable  of  long,  long  life,  that  man 
thinks  his  life  on  earth  is  short.  Only  by  losing  thai 
divine  sight  of  himself,  and  looking  at  himself  as  the 
beasts  look  at  themselves,  can  he  come  to  think  his  life 
long.  The  beast's  Hfe  never  seems  short  to  him.  Think 
of  yourself  as  a  beast  and  your  life  will  never  seem  short 
to  you.  It  is  the  divine  consciousness  in  man,  the  con- 
sciousness that  he  is  a  child  of  God,  that  makes  him 
know  he  is  short-lived.  Human  life  is  not  long  or  short, 
absolutely.  It  seems  short  to  us  because  the  conscious- 
ness of  immortality  is  in  us.  What  then  ?  It  could  not 
seem  long  unless  we  threw  that  consciousness  away. 
That  we  can  count  it  short,  then,  is  the  pledge  and  wit- 
ness of  our  nobility.  The  man  who  died  among  us  yes- 
terday, oh,  realize,  my  friends,  that  the  very  fact  that  hia 
life  could  seem  to  you,  as  you  stood  by  his  coffin,  to  have 
been  very  short,  is  a  sign  that  you  have  been  able  to  con- 
ceive of  his  humanity  and  yours  being  immortal.  Feel 
this,  aud  is  not  the  shortness  of  life  the  crown  and  glory 
of  our  race  ? 

And  again,  we  all  know  how  the  shortness  of  life 
IB  bound  up  with  its  fullness.  It  is  to  him  who  is  most 
active,  always  thinking,  feeling,  working,  caring  for  people 
and  for  things,  that  life  seems  short.  Strip  a  life  empty 
%nd  it  will  seem  long  enough.     The  day  crawls  to  the 


320  THE  SHORTNESS   OF   LIFE. 

dler,  and  flies  to  the  busy  worker.  That  is  the  common 
place  of  living.  The  shortness  of  life  is  closely  associ- 
ated, not  merely  with  the  great  hopes  of  the  future,  but 
with  the  real  vitality  of  the  present.  What  then  ?  If 
you  and  I  complain  how  short  life  is,  how  quick  it  flies 
through  the  grasp  with  which  we  try  to  hold  it,  we  are 
complaining  of  that  which  is  the  necessary  consequence 
of  our  vitality.  You  can  make  life  long  only  by  making 
it  slow ;  and  if  you  want  to  make  it  slow  I  should  think 
that  there  were  men  enough  in  town  who  could  tell  you 
how ;  men  with  idle  hands  and  brains,  who  seem  to  have 
so  much  trouble  to  get  through  life  as  it  is  that  we  can- 
not imagine  that  they  really  wish  that  there  were  more 
of  it. 

And  tell  me,  then,  does  not  the  shortness  of  life  cease 
to  be  our  sorrow  and  lamentation ;  does  it  not  become  our 
crown  and  privilege  and  glory,  when  we  see  that  life  is 
short  to  us  because  we  are,  that  life  is  short  to  us  just  in 
proportion  as  we  are,  conscious  of  immortality  and  full  of 
vitality  ?  Who  would  not  dread  to  have  his  life  begin 
to  seem  long  ?  Who  would  not  feel  that  he  was  losing 
the  proof-marks  of  his  best  humanity,  forgetting  that  he 
was  immortal  and  ceasing  to  be  thoroughly  alive  ? 

But  let  us  leave  this  and  go  further  on.  Suppose  a 
man,  with  more  or  less  of  struggle,  with  what  grace  he 
can,  has  accepted  the  shortness  of  life  as  a  conviction.  He 
knows  it.  It  has  been  forced  upon  him  by  some  special 
shock,  or  it  has  been  pressed  into  him  by  his  gradual  ex- 
perience, the  certainty  that  life  is  short,  that  he  is  not 
to  be,  cannot  be,  a  long  time  here  on  the  earth.  What 
effect  will  that  conviction  have  upon  his  hfe  ?  What  ef 
feet  ought  it  to  have  ?     Evidently  it  ought  to  go  deepei 


TB£   SH0R1«ESS  OF  LIFE.  321 

tlian  his  spirits.  It  ought  to  do  something  mare  than 
make  him  glad  or  sorry.  It  ought  to  have  some  effect 
upon  his  conduct  and  his  character.  I  should  like  to  sug- 
gest to  you  in  several  particulars  what  it  seems  to  me 
that  that  effect  will  be. 

1.  And  first  of  all  must  it  not  make  a  man  try  to  sift 
the  things  that  offer  themselves  to  him,  and  try  to  find 
out  what  his  things  are  ?  The  indiscriminateness  of  most 
men's  lives  impresses  us,  I  think,  more  and  more.  The 
old  Greek  Epictetus  said  that  for  each  of  men  there  ia 
one  great  classification  of  the  universe,  into  the  things 
which  concern  him  and  the  things  which  do  not  concern 
him.  To  how  many  men  that  classification  is  all  vague. 
Many  men's  souls  are  like  omnibuses,  stopping  to  take 
up  every  interest  or  task  that  holds  up  its  finger  and  beck- 
ons them  from  the  sidewalk.  So  many  men  are  satisfied 
with  asking  themselves  vague  questions  about  whether 
this  thing  or  that  thing  is  wrong,  as  if  whatever  they 
could  not  pronounce  to  be  absolutely  wrong  for  every 
man  to  do  was  right  for  them  to  do.  So  many  men  seem 
to  think  it  enough  that  they  should  see  no  good  reason 
for  not  doing  a  thing,  in  order  to  justify  their  doing  it. 
As  if  the  absence  of  any  reason  why  they  should  do  it 
were  not  reason  enough  why  they  should  not  do  it. 
Such  indiscriminateness  would  be  inevitable,  you  could 
not  hope  to  control  it,  if  life  were  indefinitely  long.  Such 
indiscriminateness  is  almost  legitimate  and  necessary  in 
childhood,  in  the  beginning,  the  freshman  year  of  life. 
Then  life  seems  endless.  Then  the  quick  experimenting 
senses  are  ready  for  whatever  strikes  them.  But  as  the 
course  goes  on,  as  its  limit  comes  in  sight  and  we  see  how 
ohort  it  is,  the  elective  system  must  come  in.     Out  of  the 

81 


822  THE   SHORTNESS  OF  LIFl.. 

mass  of  things  whicli  we  have  touched,  we  must  choose 
these  which  are  ours,  —  the  books  which  we  shall  read, 
the  men  whom  we  shall  know,  the  power  that  we  shall 
wield,  the  pleasure  which  we  shall  enjoy,  the  special 
point  where  we  shall  drop  our  bit  of  usefulness  into  the 
world's  life  before  we  go.  We  come  to  be  like  a  party 
of  travellers  left  at  a  great  city  railway  station  for  a 
couple  of  hours.  All  cannot  see  everything  in  town. 
Each  has  to  choose  according  to  his  tastes  what  he  will 
see.  They  separate  into  their  individualities  instead  of 
going  wandering  about  promiscuously,  as  they  would  if 
there  were  no  limit  to  their  time.  So  conscientiousness, 
self-knowledge,  independence,  and  the  toleration  of  other 
men's  freedom  which  always  goes  with  the  most  serious 
and  deep  assertion  of  our  own  freedom  are  closely  con- 
nected with  the  sense  that  life  is  very  short. 

2.  But  again,  besides  this  discrimination  of  the  things 
with  which  we  ought  to  deal,  the  sense  of  the  shortness 
of  life  also  brings  a  power  of  freedom  in  dealing  with  the 
things  which  we  do  take  to  be  our  own.  This,  I  think, 
is  what  St.  Paul  is  speaking  of  in  the  words  which  are 
in  close  connection  with  this  text  of  ours.  "Brethren, 
the  time  is  short,"  he  says ;  "  it  remaineth  that  both  they 
that  have  wives  be  as  though  they  had  none ;  and  they 
that  weep  as  though  they  wept  not ;  and  they  that  rejoice 
as  though  they  rejoiced  not ;  and  they  that  buy  as  though 
they  possessed  not ;  and  they  that  use  this  world  as  not 
abusing  it :  for  the  fashion  of  this  world  passeth  away." 
Not  that  they  should  not  marry,  or  weep,  or  rejoice,  or 
buy,  or  use  the  world.  The  shortness  of  life  was  not  to 
paralyze  life  like  that.  But  they  were  to  do  these  things 
M  if  they  did  them  not.     They  were  to  do  them  with  a 


m 


THE   SHORTNESS   OF   LIFE.  S23 

soul  above  their  details,  and  in  the  principles,  reasons,  and 
motives  which  lay  beyond  them.  To  take  once  more  the 
illustration  of  the  travellers :  he  who  has  only  an  hour  to 
stay  in  some  great  foreign  city  will  not  puzzle  and  bui 
den  himself  with  all  the  intricacies  of  its  streets  or  all 
the  small  particulars  of  its  life.  He  will  try,  if  he  is 
wise,  simply  to  catch  its  general  spirit,  to  see  what  sort 
of  town  it  is  and  learn  its  lessons.  He  must  tread  its 
pavements,  ride  in  its  carriages,  talk  with  its  people ;  but 
he  will  not  do  these  things  as  the  citizens  do  them ;  he 
will  not  be  fastidious  about  them  ;  he  will  hold  them  very 
loosely,  only  trying  to  make  each  of  them  give  him  what 
help  it  can  towards  the  understanding  of  the  city.  He 
will  do  them  as  if  he  did  them  not.  Is  not  that  the 
idea  ?  Just  so  he  who  knows  he  is  in  the  world  for  a 
rery  little  while,  who  knows  it  and  feels  it,  is  not  like  a 
man  who  is  to  live  here  forever.  He  strikes  for  the 
centre  of  living.  He  cares  for  the  principles  and  not  for 
the  forms  of  life.  He  does  the  little  daily  things  of  life, 
but  he  does  them  for  their  purposes,  not  for  themselves. 
He  is  like  a  climber  on  a  rocky  pathway,  who  sets  his 
foot  upon  each  projecting  point  of  stone,  but  who  treads 
on  each,  not  for  its  own  sake,  but  for  the  sake  of  the  ones 
above  it.  The  man  who  knows  he  is  to  die  to-morrow 
does  all  the  acts  of  to-day,  but  does  them  as  if  he  did 
not  do  them,  does  them  freely,  cannot  be  a  slave  to  their 
details,  has  entered  already  into  something  of  the  large 
liberty  of  death.  That  is  the  way  in  which  the  sense 
that  life  is  short  liberates  a  man  from  the  slavery  of  de- 
tails. You  say,  perhaps,  "  That  is  not  good.  No  man  can 
do  his  work  well  unless  his  heart  is  in  it."  But  is  it  not 
aiao  true  that  a  man's  heart  can  really  be  only  in  the 


324  THE  SHOBTNESS  OP  LIFE. 

heart  of  his  work,  and  that  the  most  conscientk  as  faith- 
fulness  in  details  will  always  belong  to  the  man,  not  who 
serves  the  details,  but  who  serves  the  idea  of  the  work 
which  he  has  to  do  ?  He  who  holds  that  the  "  fashion  ol 
this  world  passeth  away  "  will  live  in  the  fashion  still  aa  a 
present  means  of  working,  but  will  get  a  great  deal  more 
out  of  it,  because  he  holds  it  a  great  deal  more  loosely 
than  the  man  who  treats  it  as  if  it  were  to  last  forever. 
Through  the  freer  use  of  the  fashion  which  passeth  away 
he  will  come  to  the  substance  which  cannot  pass  away, — 
the  love  of  God,  the  life  and  character  of  man. 

3.  Closely  connected  with  this  is  another  idea,  which 
is  that  in  the  shortness  of  life  the  great  emotions  and 
experiences  by  which  the  human  character  is  ruled  and 
shaped  assume  their  largest  power  and  act  with  their 
most  ennobling  influence.  Every  emotion  which  a  man 
can  feel,  every  experience  which  a  man  can  undergo,  has 
its  little  form  and  its  great  form.  Happiness  is  either  a 
satisfaction  that  the  cushions  are  soft  and  the  skies  clear, 
or  a  sublime  content  in  harmony  with  the  good  uni- 
verse of  God.  Love  is  either  a  whim  of  the  eyes,  or  a 
devotion  and  consecration  of  the  soul.  Self-confidence  is 
either  a  petty  pride  in  our  own  narrowness,  or  a  realiza- 
tion of  our  duty  and  privilege  as  one  of  God's  children. 
Hope  is  either  a  petty  wilfulness,  or  a  deep  and  thought- 
ful insight.  Trust  is  either  laziness  or  love.  Fear  is 
either  a  fright  of  the  nerves,  or  the  solemn  sense  of  the 
continuousness  and  necessary  responsibility  of  life.  And 
grief  is  either  the  wrench  of  a  broken  habit,  or  the  agony 
of  a  wrung  soul.  So  every  emotion  has  its  higher  and 
its  lower  forms.  It  means  but  little  to  me  if  I  know 
only  that  a,  i-iep  vs  happy  or  unhappy,  if  I  do  not  kno^ 


THE   SHORTNESS   OF  LIFE.  325 

of  what  sort  his  joy  or  sorrow  is.  But  all  the  emotiona 
are  certainly  tempted  to  larger  action  if  it  is  realized 
that  the  world  in  which  they  take  their  birth  is  but  for 
a  little  time,  that  its  fashion  passes  away,  that  the  cir- 
cumstances of  an  experience  are  very  transitory.  That 
must  drive  me  down  into  the  essence  of  every  experi- 
ence and  make  me  realize  it  in  the  profoundest  and  the 
largest  way.  Take,  for  instance,  one  experience.  Think 
of  deep  sorrow  coming  to  a  man,  something  which  breaks 
his  home  and  heart  by  taking  suddenly,  or  slowly,  out  of 
them  that  which  is  the  centre  of  them  both,  some  life 
around  which  all  his  life  has  lived.  There  are  two  forms 
in  which  the  sorrow  of  that  death  comes  to  a  man.  One 
is  in  the  change  of  circumstances,  the  breaking  up  of 
sweet  companionships  and  pleasant  habits,  the  loneliness 
and  weariness  of  living ;  the  other  is  in  the  solemn  brood- 
ing of  mystery  over  the  soul  and  the  tumult  of  love 
within  the  soul,  the  mystery  of  death,  the  distress  of  love. 
Now  if  the  man  who  is  bereaved  sees  nothing  in  the  dis- 
tance, as  he  looks  forward,  but  one  stretch  of  living,  if  he 
realizes  most  how  long  life  is,  it  is  the  first  of  these  as- 
pects of  his  sorrow  that  is  the  most  real  to  him.  He 
multiplies  the  circumstances  of  his  bereavement  into  all 
these  coming  years.  Year  after  year,  year  after  year,  he 
is  to  live  alone.  But  if,  as  it  so  often  happens  when  death 
comes  very  near  to  us,  life  seems  a  very  little  thing ;  if, 
when  we  stand  to  watch  the  spirit  which  has  gone  away 
from  earth  to  heaven,  the  years  of  earth  which  we  have 
yet  to  live  seem  very  few  and  short ;  if  it  seems  but  a 
very  little  time  before  we  shall  go,  too,  then  our  grief  m 
exalted  to  its  lai'gest  form.  It  grows  unselfish.  It  is 
perfectly  consistent  with  a  triumphant  thankfulness  for 


826  THE   SHORTNESS   OF  LITE. 

the  dear  soul  that  has  entered  into  rest  and  glory.  It 
dwells  not  on  the  circumstances  of  bereavement,  but 
upon  that  mysterious  strain  in  which  love  has  been 
stretched  from  this  world  to  the  other,  and,  amid  aU  the 
pain  that  the  tension  brings,  is  still  aware  of  joy  at  the 
new  knowledge  of  its  own  capacities  which  has  been 
given  it.  Ah,  you  must  all  know,  you  must  all  have 
seen,  that  men's  griefs  are  as  different  as  men's  lives 
are..  To  the  man  who  is  all  wrapt  up  in  this  world, 
grief  comes  as  the  ghosts  come  to  the  poor  narrow-minded 
churl,  —  to  plague  and  tease  him,  to  disturb  the  circum- 
stances and  habits  of  his  living,  to  pull  down  his  fences 
and  make  strange,  frightful  noises  in  his  quiet  rooms. 
All  is  petty.  To  him  to  whom  life  is  but  an  episode, 
a  short  stage  in  the  existence  of  eternity,  who  is  alwaysf 
cognizant  of  the  great  surrounding  world  of  mystery, 
grief  comes  as  angels  came  to  the  tent  of  Abraham. 
Laughter  is  hushed  before  them.  The  mere  frolic  of 
life  stands  still,  but  the  soul  takes  the  grief  in  as  a  guest, 
meets  it  at  the  door,  kisses  its  hand,  washes  its  travel- 
stained  feet,  spreads  its  table  with  the  best  food,  gives  it 
the  seat  by  the  fireside,  and  listens  reverently  for  what 
it  has  to  say  about  the  God  from  whom  it  came.  So 
different  are  the  sorrows  that  come  to  two  men  which 
seem  jast  the  same.  So  is  every  emotion  great  or  little, 
according  to  the  life  in  which  it  finds  its  play.  It  must 
find  earth  too  small  for  it,  and  open  eternity  to  itself,  or 
it  spreads  itself  out  thin  and  grows  petty.  I  beg  you, 
if  God  sends  you  grief,  to  take  it  largely  by  letting  it 
first  of  all  show  you  how  short  life  is,  and  then  prophesy 
eternity.  Such  is  the  grief  of  which  the  poet  sings  sa 
nobly,— 


THE  SHORTNESS  OF  LIFE.  827 

"  Grief  should  be 
like  joy,  majestic,  equable,  sedate  ; 
Confirming,  cleansing,  raising,  making  free  ; 
Strong  to  consume  small  troubles  ;  to  commend 
Great  thoughts,  grave  thoughts,  thoughts  lasting  to  the  end." 

But  grief,  to  be  all  that,  must  see  the  end ;  must  bring 
and  forever  keep  with  its  pain  such  a  sense  of  the  short* 
ness  of  life  that  the  pain  shall  seem  but  a  temporary  ac- 
cident, and  that  all  that  is  to  stay  forever  after  the  pain 
has  ceased,  the  exaltation,  the  unselfishness,  the  mystery, 
the  nearness  to  God,  shall  seem  to  be  the  skibstance  of  the 
sorrow. 

4.  But  let  me  hasten  on  and  name  another  power 
which  seems  to  be  bound  up  with  the  perception  of  the 
shortness  of  life.  I  mean  the  criticalness  of  life.  All 
men  who  have  believed  at  all  that  there  was  another  life, 
have  held  in  some  way  that  this  life  was  critical.  Some 
have  held  absolutely  that  probation  wholly  stopped  when 
this  life  ended,  and  that  as  the  man  was  when  he  died,  so 
he  was  certainly  to  be  forever  and  ever.  Others  have 
only  felt  that  such  a  change  as  death  involves  must  have 
some  mighty  power  to  fasten  character,  and  so  to  fasten 
destiny,  and  that  the  soul,  living  in  any  unknown  world, 
must  carry  forever,  deep  in  its  nature  and  its  fortunes, 
the  marks  and  consequences  of  what  it  has  been  here. 
That  thought  of  criticalness  belongs  to  every  limited  pe- 
riod of  being  which  opens  into  something  greater.  A 
boy  feels  the  probation  character  of  his  youth,  feels  that 
he  is  making  manhood,  just  in  proportion  as  he  vividly 
realizes  the  approach  of  his  majority.  And  man  is  made 
BO  that  some  sense  of  criticalness  is  necessary  to  the  most 
vigorous  and  best  life  always.  Let  me  feel  that  nothing 
but  this  moment  depends  upon  this  moment's  action,  and 


328  THE   SHORTNESS   OF   LIFE. 

I  am  very  apt  to  let  this  moment  act  pretty  much  as  it 
will.  Let  me  see  the  spirits  of  the  moments  yet  unborn 
standing  and  watching  it  anxiously,  and  must  watch  it 
aJao  for  their  sakes.  And  it  is  in  this  general  sense  of 
probation,  or  of  criticalness,  this  sense  that  no  moment 
liveth  or  dieth  to  itself ;  it  is  in  this,  not  stated  as  a  doc- 
trine, but  spread  out  as  a  great  pervading  consciousness 
all  through  life ,  it  is  in  this  that  the  strongest  moral 
power  of  life  is  found.  Now  ask  yourself:  Could  this 
have  been  if  life  had  been  so  long,  if  life  had  seemed  so 
long  to  men,  as  never  to  suggest  its  limits  ?  It  is  when 
the  brook  begins  to  hear  the  great  river  calling  it,  and 
knows  that  its  time  is  short,  that  it  begins  to  hurry  over 
the  rocks  and  toss  its  foam  into  the  air  and  make  straight 
for  the  valley.  Life  that  never  thinks  of  its  end  lives 
in  a  present  and  loses  the  flow  and  movement  of  respon- 
sibility. It  is  not  so  much  that  the  shortness  of  life 
makes  us  prepare  for  death,  as  it  is  that  it  spreads  the 
feeling  of  criticalness  all  through  life,  and  makes  each 
moment  prepare  for  the  next,  makes  life  prepare  for  life. 
This  is  its  power.  Blessed  is  he  who  feels  it.  Blessed 
is  he  in  whose  experience  each  day  and  each  hour  has  aU 
the  happiness  and  all  the  solemnity  of  a  parent  towards 
the  day  and  the  hour  to  which  it  gives  birth,  stands 
sponsor  for  it,  holds  it  for  baptism  at  the  font  of  God. 
Such  days  are  sacred  in  each  other's  eyes.  The  life  in 
which  such  days  succeed  each  other  is  a  holy  family  with 
its  moments  "  bound  each  to  each  by  natural  piety." 

6.  I  take  one  moment  only  to  suggest  one  more  con- 
sequence which  comes  from  the  sense  of  how  short  life  is 
I  mean  the  feeling  that  it  gives  us  towards  our  fellow* 
men.     Do  you  not  know  that  when  your  time  of  inter- 


THE  SHORTNESS   OF   LIFE.  329 

course  is  short  with  any  man,  your  relations  with  that 
man  grow  true  and  deep  ?  Two  men  who  have  lived 
side  hj  side  for  years,  with  business  and  social  life  be- 
tween them,  with  a  multitude  of  suspicions  and  conceal^ 
ments,  let  them  know  that  they  have  only  an  hour  more 
to  live  together,  and,  as  they  look  into  each  other's  eyes, 
do  not  the  suspicions  and  concealments  clear  away  ? 
They  know  each  other.  They  trust  each  other.  They 
think  the  best  of  each  other.  They  are  ready  to  do  all 
that  they  can  do  for  each  other  in  those  few  momenta 
that  remain.  Oh,  my  dear  friends,  you  who  are  letting 
miserable  misunderstandings  run  on  from  year  to  year, 
meaning  to  clear  them  up  some  day ;  you  who  are  keeping 
wretched  quarrels  alive  because  you  cannot  quite  make  up 
your  mind  that  now  is  the  day  to  sacrifice  your  pride  and 
kill  them ;  you  who  are  passing  men  sullenly  upon  the 
street,  not  speaking  to  them  out  of  some  silly  spite,  and 
yet  knowing  that  it  would  fill  you  with  shame  and  re- 
morse if  you  heard  that  one  of  those  men  were  dead  to- 
morrow morning ;  you  who  are  letting  your  neighbor 
starve,  tiU  you  hear  that  he  is  dying  of  starvation  ;  or  let- 
ting your  friend's  heart  ache  for  a  word  of  appreciation  or 
sympathy,  which  you  mean  to  give  him  some  day,  —  if 
you  only  could  know  and  see  and  feel,  all  of  a  sudden,  that 
"the  time  is  short,"  how  it  would  break  the  spell !  How 
you  would  go  instantly  and  do  the  thing  which  you  might 
never  have  another  chance  to  do.  What  a  day  of  friend- 
liness, of  brotherliness,  of  reconciliations,  of  help,  the  last 
day  of  the  world  will  be,  if  men  shall  know  how  near  the 
awful  end  is  !  But  need  we  wait  for  that  ?  Cannot  the 
men  and  women  whom  we  live  with  now  be  sacred  to  as 
by  the  knowledge  of  what  wonderful,  mysterious  ground  it 


330  THE  SHORTNESS  OP  LIFE. 

is  that  we  are  walking  together,  here  in  this  narrow  hi> 
man  life,  close  on  the  borders  of  eternity  ? 

"  Brethren,  the  time  is  short."  There  is  the  fact,  then, 
forever  pressing  on  us,  and  these  are  the  consequences 
which  it  ought  to  bring  to  those  who  feel  its  pressure. 
Behold,  it  is  no  dreary  shadow  hanging  above  our  heads 
and  shutting  out  the  sunshine.  It  is  an  everlasting  in- 
spiration. It  makes  a  man  know  himself  and  his  career. 
It  makes  him  put  his  heart  into  the  heart  of  the  career 
which  he  knows  to  be  his.  It  makes  the  emotions  and 
experiences  of  life  great  and  not  petty  to  him.  It  makes 
life  solemn  and  interesting  with  criticalness ;  and  it  makes 
friendship  magnanimous,  and  the  desire  to  help  our  fel- 
low-men real  and  energetic.  It  concentrates  and  in- 
vigorates our  lives.  In  the  brightest,  freshest,  clearest 
mornings,  it  comes  to  us  not  as  a  cloud,  not  as  a  paraly- 
sis, but  as  a  new  brightness  in  the  sunshine  and  a  new 
vigor  in  the  arm.  "  Brethren,  the  time  is  short."  Only 
remember  the  shortness  of  life  is  not  a  reality  to  us,  ex- 
cept as  it  shows  itself  against  a  true  realization  of  eter- 
nity. Life  is  long  to  any  man,  however  he  mourns  over 
its  shortness,  to  whom  life  is  a  whole.  Life  as  a  part,  life 
set  upon  the  background  of  eternity,  life  recognized  as 
the  temporary  form  of  that  whose  substance  is  everlast- 
ing, that  is  short ;  we  wait  for,  we  expect  its  end.  And 
remember  that  to  the  Christian  the  interpretation  of  all 
this  is  in  the  Incarnation  of  Jesus  Christ.  "  I  am  He  that 
liveih,  and  was  dead ;  and  behold,  I  am  alive  for  evermore." 
The  earthly  life  set  against  the  eternal  life,  the  incorpo- 
rate earthly  form  uttering  here  for  a  time  the  everlasting 
and  essential  being,  those  years  shut  in  out  of  the  eterni- 
ties between  the  birth  and  the  aacension,  that  resurrection 


THE   SHORTNESS  OF  LIFE.  331 

opening  the  prospect  of  the  life  that  never  was  to  end,  — 
these  are  the  never-failing  interpretation  to  the  man  who 
believes  in  them  of  the  temporal  and  eternal  in  his  own 
experience.  Christ  comes  and  puts  His  essential  life  into 
our  human  form.  In  that  form  He  claims  the  truest 
brotherhood  with  us.  He  shares  our  lot.  He  binds  His 
life  with  ours  so  that  they  never  can  be  separated.  What 
He  is  we  must  be ;  what  we  are  He  must  be  forever. 
Finally,  by  the  cross  of  love,  He,  entering  into  our  death, 
takes  us  completely  into  His  life.  And  when  He  had  done 
all  this  He  rose.  Out  of  His  tomb,  standing  there  among 
human  tombs.  He  comes,  and  lo,  before  Him  there  rolla 
on  the  unbroken  endlessness  of  Being.  And  not  before 
Him  alone,  —  before  those  also  whom  He  had  taken  so 
completely  to  Himself.  His  resurrection  makes  our  res- 
urrection sure.  Our  earthly  life,  like  His,  becomes  an 
episode,  a  short,  special,  temporary  thing,  when  it  is  seen 
like  His  against  an  immortality. 

So  the  Incarnation  is  the  perpetual  interpretation  of 
our  life.  Jesus  cries,  "  It  is  finished,"  on  His  cross,  and 
at  once  it  is  evident  that  that  finishing  is  but  a  begin- 
ning ;  that  it  is  a  breaking  to  pieces  of  the  temporal,  that 
it  may  be  lost  in  the  eternal !  That  cross  is  the  perpet- 
ual glorification  of  the  shortness  of  life.  In  its  light  we, 
too,  can  stand  by  the  departing  form  of  our  own  life,  or  of 
some  brother's  life,  and  say,  "  It  is  finished,"  and  know 
that  the  finishing  is  really  a  beginning.  The  temporary 
is  melting  away  like  a  cloud  in  the  sky,  that  the  great 
total  sky  may  all  be  seen.  The  form  in  which  the  man 
has  lived  is  decaying,  that  the  real  life  of  the  man  may 
be  apparent.  The  fashion  of  this  world  is  passing  away 
the  episode,  the  accident  of  earth  is  over,  that  the  spirit* 


332  THE  SHORTNESS  OF   LIFE. 

aal  reality  may  be  clear.  It  is  in  the  light  of  the  crosa 
that  the  exquisite  picture  of  Shelley,  who  tried  so  hard  to 
be  heathen  and  would  still  be  Christian  in  his  own  des 
pite,  is  really  realized, — 

"  The  one  remains,  the  many  change  and  pass ; 

Heaven's  light  forever  sliines ;  earth's  shadows  fly ; 
Life,  like  a  dome  of  many-colored  glass, 

Stains  the  white  radiance  of  eternity, 
Until  death  tramples  it  to  fragment!* 

And  80  what  is  there  to  be  done  ?  What  could  be 
ciearer  ?  Only  to  him  who  realizes  eternity  does  the 
short  human  life  really  seem  short  and  give  out  of  its 
shortness  its  true  solemnity  and  blessing.  It  is  only  by 
binding  myself  to  eternity  that  I  can  know  the  shortness 
of  time.  But  how  shall  I  bind  myself  to  eternity  except 
by  giving  myself  to  Him  who  is  eternal  in  obedient  love  ? 
Obedient  love  I  Loving  obedience !  That  is  what  binds 
the  soul  of  the  less  to  the  soul  of  the  greater  everywhere. 
I  give  myself  to  the  eternal  Christ,  and  in  His  eternity  I 
find  my  own.  In  His  service  I  am  bound  to  Him,  and 
the  shortness  of  that  life,  whose  limitations  in  any  way 
shut  me  out  from  Him,  becomes  an  inspiration,  not  a  bur- 
den to  me.  Oh,  my  dear  friends,  you  who  with  Chris- 
tian faith  have  seen  a  Christian  die,  tell  me  was  not  this 
short  life  then  revealed  to  you  in  all  its  beauty  ?  Did 
you  not  see  completely  that  no  life  was  too  long  which 
Christ  had  filled  with  the  gift  and  knowledge  of  Himself ; 
no  life  was  too  short  which  departed  from  the  earth  only 
to  go  and  be  with  Him  in  Heaven  forever  ? 

My  dear  friends,  let  us  think  how  solemn,  how  beauti- 
ful, the  thought  of  dedication  to  Christ  becomes,  when 
through  His  voice  which  calls  us  sounds  the  warning 


THE   SHORTNESS   OF  LIFE.  383 

and  inspiring  cry  of  His  disciple,  "  Brethren,  the  time  ia 
short."  There  is  no  time  to  waste  of  what  belongs  en- 
tirely to  Him,  "  The  time  is  short."  Take  your  place 
now.  Bind  yourself  now  in  with  the  fortunes  of  those 
who  are  trying  to  serve  Him.  This  Christian  Church 
which  we  see  here  is  only  the  beginning.  This  poor 
stained,  feeble  church  of  earth  is  only  the  germ  and  prom- 
ise of  the  great  Church  of  Heaven,  and  we  who  are  tiying 
to  serve  Him  together  now  have  a  right  to  take  courage 
from  the  promise  of  the  Master,  who  has  overcome,  "  Him 
that  overcometh  I  will  make  a  pillar  in  the  temple  of  my 
God,  and  He  shall  go  no  more  out.' 


XIX. 

HUMILITY. 

"  And  b«  Q  othed  with  humility."  —  1  Pbteb  t.  S. 

We  are  thinking,  during  Lent,  about  the  duty  of  being 
humble.  But  what  a  poor  thing  we  make  out  of  humility. 
What  a  fiction  it  is  apt  to  be  with  us.  How  artificial 
we  are  apt  to  make  it.  We  reduce  it  to  a  few  observ- 
ances. We  try  to  cultivate  it  from  outside.  At  most  we 
try  to  school  ourselves  into  certan  feelings,  making  our- 
selves think  about  certain  things  until  we  reach  a  certain 
emotional  condition,  and  we  call  that  humility ;  but  hu- 
mility not  as  an  action,  not  as  a  sentiment,  but  as  an 
abiding  character,  out  of  which  all  actions  should  flow 
in  one  direction,  from  which  all  sentiments  should  rise, 
isloud-like,  with  one  color,  —  this  we  hardly  conceive  of, 
and  to  seek  after  it  hardly  enters  into  our  thoughts. 

Let  us  look,  then,  at  humility  a  little  while,  and  see  if 
we  cannot  get  some  deeper  and  truer  notions  about  what 
it  really  is,  and  where  it  really  comes  from.  It  is  not 
well  to  use  the  word,  and  praise  the  grace,  and  yet  be  all 
t&e  while  mistaking  what  it  is  that  we  name  and  praise. 

The  word  itself  and  its  history  are  interesting.  ''  There 
are  cases,"  says  Coleridge,  "in  which  more  knowledge,  of 
more  value,  may  be  conveyed  by  the  history  of  a  word 
than  by  the  history  of  a  campaign."  You  can  often 
trace  a  word  down  the  generations  and  judge  o{  the  char- 


HUldlLITT.  335 

»cter  of  each  period  by  seeing  whether  the  word  was  pop- 
alar  or  unpopular,  whether  it  was  a  title  of  dishonor  or 
of  honoi  in  each  successive  age  ;  just  as,  if  you  could  send 
H  great  warrior  or  a  great  thinker  or  a  great  saint,  a 
Caesar  or  a  Bacon  or  a  St.  John,  from  age  to  age  and 
country  to  countiy,  and  could  see  how  every  age  and 
country  regarded  Him,  you  would  have  a  test  of  the 
character  of  every  land  and  time.  It  is  true  of  the  ca- 
reei"s  of  the  best  words,  as  Jesus  said  it  was  to  be  of  the 
progress  of  His  disciples,  that  "  he  that  receiveth  yoo 
receiveth  me."  The  best  and  noblest  words  are  really 
the  judges  of  the  people,  who  pronounce  on  their  own 
n^oral  condition  n-s  they  speak  them  with  affection  or  dia- 
like. 

Now  take  this  word  humility.  It  was  not  a  new  word 
when  the  New  Testament  was  written.  It,  or  its  Greek 
equivalent,  was  very  common.  It  had  been  used  for 
years.  Only  it  is  striking  that  almost  without  exception 
the  word  humility,  used  before  the  time  of  Christ,  is 
used  contemptuously  and  rebukingly.  It  always  meant 
meanness  of  spirit.  To  be  humble  was  to  be  a  coward. 
It  described  a  cringin-j  soul.  It  was  a  word  of  slaves. 
Such  is  its  almost  constant  classic  use. 

Where  could  we  fin< '.  a  more  striking  instance  of  the 
chang3  that  the  Christian  religion  brought  into  the  world, 
than  in  the  way  in  which  it  took  this  disagraceful  word 
and  made  it  honorable.  To  be  humble  is  to  have  a  low 
estimation  of  one's  self.  That  was  considered  shameful 
in  the  olden  time.  Nobody  claimed  it  for  himself.  No- 
body enjoined  it  upon  another.  You  insulted  a  man  if 
you  called  him  humble.  It  seemed  to  be  inconsistent 
with  that  self-respect  which  is  necessary  to  any  good  ac 


836  HUMILITT. 

tivity.  Christ  cam«  and  made  the  despised  quality  the 
crowning  grace  of  the  culture  that  He  inaugurated.  Lo  1 
the  disgraceful  word  became  the  key-word  of  His  fullest 
gospel.  He  redeemed  the  quality,  and  straightway  the 
name  became  honorable.  It  became  the  ambition  of  all 
men  to  wear  it.  To  caE  a  man  humble  was  to  praise 
him  now.  Men  affected  it  if  they  did  not  have  it.  Pride 
began  to  ape  humility  when  humility  was  made  the 
crowning  grace  of  human  life. 

It  is  in  moral  changes  such  as  these,  in  alterations  of 
the  standards  and  aspirations  of  the  race,  that  the  rev- 
olutionary power  of  Christianity  is  really  shown,  far  more 
than  in  external  changes,  the  progress  of  civilization,  the 
reshaping  of  empires.  Think  what  the  change  must  have 
been.  Think  with  what  indignation  and  contempt  men 
of  the  old  school  in  Rome  and  Athens  must  have  seen 
mean-spiritedness,  as  they  called  it,  taken  up,  inculcated 
and  honored,  proclaimed  as  the  salvation  of  the  world, 
and  Him  in  whom  it  was  most  signally  embodied  made 
the  Saviour  and  King  of  men.  Ah,  it  seems  to  me  more 
and  more  that  it  must  have  been  very  hard  for  thosfc 
early  disciples  to  have  believed  in  Christ. 

But  let  us  see,  if  we  can,  what  the  change  was  that 
Christianity  accomplished,  and  how  it  came  about.  The 
quality  that  Christianity  rescued  and  glorified  was  hu- 
mility. Humility  means  a  low  estimate  or  value  of  one's 
self.  But  all  values  are  relative.  The  estimate  we  set 
on  anything  depends  of  course  on  the  standard  with 
which  we  compare  it.  You  cannot  tell  how  big  anything 
is,  unless  you  compare  it  with  something  else,  and  so 
values  are  always  varying  as  the  standards  or  the  objects 
with  which  you  compare  the  thing  that  you  are  valuing 


HUillLITT. 


837 


change.  Your  boy  cl  twelve  plays  with  his  little  broth- 
ers of  three  or  four,  and  seems  to  them  a  giant  and  a  sage , 
then  he  goes  and  sits  among  his  teachers,  and  is  forth- 
with a  child  again.  Everything  depends  for  its  value  on 
the  standards  with  which  you  compare  it.  The  silver 
ifl  precious  tiU  you  find  the  gold,  the  gold  until  you  find 

the  diamond. 

Now  Christianity's  great  primary  revelation  was  God. 
Much  about  Him  it  showed   men  ;    but  first  of   aU   it 
showed  them  Him.     He,  the  Creator,  the  Governor,  be- 
came a  presence  clear  and  plain  before  men's  hearts.    Hia 
greatness.  His  holiness,  His  love,  — nay,  we  cannot  de- 
scribe  Him  by  His  qualities,  for  He  is  greater  than  them 
all,  _  He,  by  the  marvellous  method  of  the  Incarnarion, 
showed  himself  to  man.     He  stood  beside  man's  work. 
He  towered  above  and  folded  Himself  about  man's  life. 
He   entered   into  men's  closets   and  took  possession  of 
men's  hearts.     And  what  then  ?     God  in  the  world  must 
be  the  standard  of  the  worid.     Greatness  meant  some- 
thing different  when  men  had  seen  how  great  He  was, 
and  "the  manhood  which  had  compared  itself  with  lesser 
men  and  grown  proud  now  had  a  chance  to  match  itself 
with  God,  and  to  see  how  small  it  was  and  to  grow 
humble  about   itself. 

We  are  not  dealing  only  with  history ;  we  are  not  talk- 
ing only  about  what  happened  eighteen  hundred  years 
ago.  A  man  is  living  a  pagan  life  here,  now,  among  us. 
VYherever  he  goes  he  meets  men  whom  he  measures  him- 
self against,  and  finds  that  he  surpasses  them.  He  is  the 
Btxongest  man  in  the  wrestle  of  business,  the  quickest  man 
at  a  bargain,  the  wittiest  man  at  an  argument.  Now  that 
man  cannot  be  humble.    He  overtops  his  Utrle  world  and 


^38  HUMILITY. 

he  must  think  hinxself  high.  The  White  Moontaiigs  have 
never  seen  the  Alps,  and  Mount  Washington  and  Mount 
Jefferson,  looking  down  on  their  lower  peaks,  must  think 
they  are  the  summits  of  the  world.  It  is  strange  how 
small  men  can  make  their  world,  so  that  the  petty  su- 
premacy of  a  school-room  or  a  shop  counter  is  enough 
to  kill  out  humility.  Now,  if  such  a  man  comes  among 
other  men  better  and  greater  than  himself,  he  does,  per- 
haps, learn  what  it  is  to  be  humble.  Only  our  pride  is 
very  ingenious,  and  we  are  very  quick  to  find  some  point 
in  which  the  greatest  of  our  superiors  is  worse  off  than 
we  are,  and  to  hide  our  imperilled  self-satisfaction  there. 
"Yes,"  we  say,  "  he  knows  a  hundred  times  as  much,  and 
is  a  hundred  times  as  generous  as  I,  but  he  has  not  my 
good  taste,  or  he  cannot  coin  money  as  I  can."  It  is  won- 
derful how  the  smallest  man  can  keep  his  self-compla- 
cency in  the  presence  of  the  largest.  So  many  of  us  have 
some  one  pet  point  in  which  we  really  believe  that  we  sur- 
pass almost  every  one  we  meet.  But  let  that  small  man 
become  a  Christian.  That  means,  let  the  narrow  walls  of 
his  life  be  broken  down  and  let  him  see  God,  present 
here  by  Christ.  At  once  then  is  all  changed.  It  is  as  if 
you  took  the  brown  rugged  hill  and  towered  up  into  the 
sky  above  it  the  white,  straight,  topless  alpine  mountain. 
All  question  of  feet  and  inches  disappears,  and  in  tho 
consciousness  of  its  littleness  that  which  had  counted  itseli 
great  does  homage  to  the  truly  great  which  it  has  found. 
This  is  the  meaning  of  whatever  sense  of  his  own  lit- 
tleness comes  into  a  man's  life  when  he  is  made  a  Chris- 
tian. I  think  it  is  terrible  to  consider  what  a  fearful 
thing  it  would  be  if  the  only  thing  that  Christ  showed  us 
at  God  were  His  greatness.     The  pure  humiliation  would 


HUMIUIY.  889 

be  too  crushing.  Just  imagine  that  when  you  and  I  were 
going  on  learning  our  lessons,  doing  our  work,  exercising 
our  skill  here  on  the  earth  and  proud  of  our  knowledge, 
our  strength,  and  our  skill,  just  suppose  that  suddenly 
Omniscience  towered  up  above  our  knowledge,  and  Om- 
nipotence above  our  strength,  and  the  Infinite  Wisdom 
stood  piercing  out  of  the  sight  of  our  ignorant  and  baffled 
skill.  Must  it  not  crush  the  man  with  an  utter  insignifi- 
cance? What  is  the  use  of  heaving  up  these  mole-hills 
so  laboriously  close  by  the  gigantic  mountain-side  ?  But 
if  the  revelation  is  not  only  this ;  if  it  includes  not  only 
the  greatness  but  the  love  of  God ;  if  the  majesty  that 
is  shown  to  us  is  the  majesty  of  a  father,  which  takes 
our  littleness  into  its  greatness,  makes  it  part  of  itself, 
honors  it,  trains  it,  does  not  mock  it,  then  there  cornea 
the  true  graciousness  of  humility.  It  is  not  less  humble, 
but  it  is  not  crushed.  It  is  not  paralyzed,  but  stimulated. 
The  energy  which  the  man  used  to  get  out  of  his  estimate 
of  his  own  greatness  he  gets  now  out  of  the  sight  of  HIb 
Father's,  which  yet  is  so  near  to  him  that,  in  some  finer 
and  higher  sense,  it  still  is  his  ;  and  so  he  is  more  hopeful 
and  happy  and  eager  in  his  humility  than  he  ever  used 
to  be  in  his  pride.  This  is  the  philosophy  of  reverence 
and  humility  as  enrichers  of  life  and  main-springs  of  ac- 
tivity. 

There  is  nothing  so  bad  for  man  or  woman  as  to  lire 
always  with  their  inferiors.  It  is  a  truth  so  important 
that  one  might  well  wish  to  turn  aside  a  moment  And 
urge  it,  even  in  its  lower  aspects,  upon  the  young  people 
who  are  just  making  their  associations  and  friendships. 
Many  a  temptation  of  laziness  or  pride  induces  us  to 
draw  towards  those  who  do  not  know  as  much  or  are  not 


340  HUMILITT. 

in  some  way  as  strong  as  we  are.  It  is  a  smaller  tax 
upon  our  powers  to  be  in  their  society.  But  it  is  bad  foi 
us.  I  am  sure  that  I  have  known  men,  intellectually  and 
morally  very  strong,  the  whole  development  of  whose  in- 
tellectual and  moral  life  has  suffered  and  been  dwarfed, 
because  they  have  only  accompanied  with  their  inferiors, 
because  they  have  not  lived  with  men  greater  than  them- 
selves. Whatever  else  they  lose,  they  surely  must  lose 
some  culture  of  humility.  If  I  could  choose  a  young  man's 
companions,  some  should  be  weaker  than  himself,  that 
he  might  learn  patience  and  charity ;  many  should  be  as 
nearly  as  possible  his  equals,  that  he  might  have  the  full 
freedom  of  friendship  ;  but  most  should  be  stronger  than 
he  was,  that  he  might  forever  be  thinking  humbly  of 
himself  and  be  tempted  to  higher  things.  And  this  prin- 
ciple, which  is  surely  the  true  one  in  the  associations  of 
men  with  one  another,  is  elevated  to  its  perfect  applica- 
tion when  we  think  of  man  humbled  and  incited  by  the 
constant  presence  of  God  manifest  both  as  majesty  and 
love  in  Christ. 

It  was  not  strange  that  humility  should  be  contemp- 
tible as  long  as  and  where  the  presence  of  God  was  very 
little  real.  The  only  way  for  men  to  be  humble  then 
was  for  them  to  stoop  until  they  were  lower  than  some- 
thing than  which  they  were  made  to  be  taller.  But 
when  Christ  showed  us  God,  then  man  had  only  to  stand 
at  his  highest  and  look  up  to  the  Infinite  above  him  to 
see  how  small  he  was.  And,  always,  the  true  way  to  be 
humble  is  not  to  stoop  till  you  are  smaller  than  yourself, 
but  to  stand  at  your  real  height  against  some  higher  nat- 
ure that  shall  show  you  what  the  real  smallness  of  your 
greatest  greatness  is.     The  first  is  the  unreal  humility 


HUMIUTY.  341 

that  always  goes  about  depreciating  human  nature ;  th« 
second  is  the  genuine  humility  that  always  stands  in  loye 
and  adoration,  glorifying  God. 

2.  This  is  one,  then,  of  the  ways  in  which  Christ  res- 
cued and  exalted  humility.  He  gave  man  his  true  stand- 
ard. He  set  man's  littleness  against  the  infinite  height 
of  God.  The  next  way  that  I  want  to  speak  of  is  even 
more  remarkable.  He  asserted  and  magnified  the  essen- 
tial glory  of  humanity.  Remember,  always,  when  you 
say  that  Christ  convicted  man  of  sin,  that,  nevertheless, 
true  as  that  is,  there  never  was  any  life  that  so  superbly 
asserted  the  essential  worth  of  humanity,  —  showed  what 
a  surpassing  thing  it  is  to  be  a  man,  —  like  that  sin-con 
victing  life  of  Jesus.  He  showed  us  that  the  human 
might  be  joined  with  the  divine.  He  showed  us  that 
from  lips  of  flesh  like  ours  those  mighty  words,  "  I  and 
my  Father  are  one,"  might  issue,  and  yet  the  lips  not  be 
burned  up  in  uttering  them ;  and  more  than  this.  He 
showed  us  that  the  human  soul  was  worth  all  the  mys- 
terious and  terrible  redemption  of  the  cross.  Thus  He 
glorified  human  nature.  And  does  it  seem  strange  then 
to  say  that  by  this  glorification  He  taught  man  that  it 
was  his  true  place  to  be  humble  ?  Ah,  if  a  man  must 
be  humbled,  and  is  exalted  by  his  humility,  when  he  sees 
God,  surely  when  he  sees  the  possibility  of  himself,  there 
is  no  truer  or  more  exalted  feeling  for  him  than  to  look 
in  on  what  he  is  and  think  it  very  mean  and  wretched  by 
the  side  of  what  he  might  be,  what  his  Lord  has  showed 
him  that  he  was  made  for.  Christ  makes  us  humble  by 
showing  us  our  design.  Again,  let  me  suppose  that  I 
can  reaUy  get  close  to  the  proud,  self-sufficient  master  ot 
the  state,  the  shop,  the  farm.    I  get  his  ear  in  some  lull  oi 


B42  HUMILITT. 

his  noisy  work,  and  I  tell  him  the  story  of  a  being  whom 
God  loves  and  treasures.  I  tell  him  about  powers  meant 
to  grapple  with  eternal  things.  I  describe  to  him  a  love 
that  is  made  to  love  the  loveliest.  I  open  the  gates  of  im- 
mortality and  show  him  life  opening,  brightening  forever 
and  forever.  I  am  able  to  touch  the  very  breast  of  the  Al- 
mighty, and  lo  !  the  crystal  window  of  revelation  opens 
and  the  love  of  God  for  this  wonderful  being  bums  clear 
•within.  "  God  so  loved  the  world  !  "  I  tell  the  story  of 
this  being,  and  then  to  my  good  friend,  absorbed  in  the 
low  fret  and  sin  and  worry  of  this  world,  I  say,  "  This  is 
God's  idea  of  you."  I  drop  the  curtain  of  his  real  life  for 
a  moment  and  let  him  see  God's  purpose  !  Is  he  not  hum- 
bled ?  What  "  Thou  art  the  man ! "  of  any  Nathan  charg- 
ing him  with  sin  could  make  his  sin  seem  so  wretched  to 
him  as  this  story  of  himself,  written  in  the  bright  letters 
of  the  Saviour's  Gospel,  even  in  the  red  letters  of  the 
Saviour's  blood?  He  matches  himself  against  himself  and 
is  ashamed.  The  more  he  thinks  of  what  he  might  have 
been,  the  less  he  thinks  of  what  he  is.  It  strips  his  pride 
off  from  him  and  clothes  him  with  humility. 

There  is  nothing  more  strange  and  at  the  same  time 
more  truthful  about  Christianity,  than  its  combination 
f  humiliation  and  exaltation  for  the  soul  of  man.  If 
one  wants  to  prove  that  man  is  but  a  little  lower  than 
the  angels,  the  son  and  heir  of  God,  he  must  go  to  the 
Bible.  If  he  wants  to  prove  how  poor  and  base  and  sa- 
tan-like  the  soul  of  man  can  be,  still  to  the  Bible  he  must 
go.  If  you  want  to  find  the  highest  ecstasy  that  man's 
spirit  ever  reached,  it  is  the  Christian  saint  exulting  in 
his  God.  Do  you  want  to  hear  the  bitterest  sorrow  that 
ever  wrung  this  human  heart?     It  is  that  same  Chris* 


HUMIUTT.  843 

tian  saint  penitent  for  his  sin.  The  same  faith  has  built 
its  cathedral  spires  that  pierced  the  very  skies  with  their 
triumphant  hope,  and  it  has  hollowed  the  hermit's  cavea 
under  the  ground,  as  if  men  could  not  hide  their  sinful- 
ness  too  deep  out  of  the  sight  of  daylight  and  of  God. 
ITie  exaltation  of  Chtistianity  seems  to  get  its  supremest 
jubilate  out  of  the  depths  from  which  it  sprang  up  into 
the  sky,  and  its  humiliation  is  all  the  more  profound  both 
for  the  height  from  which  it  fell  and  for  the  height  to 
which  it  may  rise  again.  The  world  has  known  no  psalms 
and  no  lamentations  like  the  Bible's,  and  they  are  parts 
of  the  one  same  book. 

If  I  am  speaking  directly  to  the  experience  of  any 
thoughtful  and  sensitive  person  here  to-day,  I  know  that 
he  will  bear  me  witness  when  I  say  that  in  this  great 
characteristic  of  it  Christianity  is  true  to  all  the  deepest 
facts  of  human  life.  Have  you  not  learnt,  did  you  not 
learn  very  early,  that  exaltation  and  abasement  do  not 
stand  far  apart  in,  do  not  come  singly  into,  your  life? 
Thoughtless  and  coarse  natures,  feeling  only  the  grosser 
delights  and  the  grosser  sorrows,  are  either  all  delighted  or 
all  sorrowful,  and  know  no  mixture  of  emotions.  Either 
they  are  all  triumphant  or  entirely  discouraged.  But  as 
you  went  farther  and  came  to  subtler  disciplines  of  God, 
have  you  not  known  what  it  was  to  see  your  privileges 
never  so  clearly  as  in  the  light  of  your  imperfections, 
and  your  imperfections  never  so  clearly  as  in  the  light  of 
your  privileges  ?  Just  when  you  saw  some  dear  life  pass 
through  the  gate  into  the  immortal  world,  and  saw  what 
a  bliss  and  triumph  there  must  be  for  one  to  whom  that 
unseen  world  was  real  and  bright,  just  then  you  felt  how 
little  yoa  had  grasped  it,  how  wedded  you  were  to  thwa 


344  HUMILITY. 

things  that  are  mortal  and  seen.  Just  when  you  sa^ 
Bome  glimpse  of  the  sweetness  and  beauty  of  giving  up 
yourself  for  others,  you  found  how  unwilling  you  were  to 
sacrifice  yourself,  how  full  of  selfishness  you  were.  The 
«ame  light  which  showed  you  the  heaven  th*t  you  were 
made  for  has  always  showed  you  the  rock  that  you  were 
chained  to ;  as  the  same  word  of  Jesus  which  showed  the 
young  nobleman  the  treasures  in  heaven  brought  back 
before  his  mind  the  treasures  on  earth  from  which  he 
could  not  tear  himself  away.  This  makes  the  sacredness 
and  awfulness  of  life  when  we  come  to  know  it,  that  we 
are  never  so  near  our  highest  as  when  we  are  most  sen- 
sible of  the  danger  of  our  lowest,  and  the  danger  of  the 
lowest  is  never  so  real  to  us  as  when  the  splendor  of  the 
highest  stands  wide  open. 

I  think  we  cannot  but  see  the  beauty  of  a  humility 
like  this  if  it  once  becomes  the  ruling  power  of  a  changed 
man's  life,  this  humility  born  of  the  sight  of  a  man's  pos- 
sible self.  It  has  in  it  all  that  is  good  in  the  best  self- 
respect.  Nay,  with  reference  to  the  whole  subject  of 
self-respect  this  seems  to  be  true,  that  the  only  salvation 
from  an  admiration  of  our  own  present  condition,  which 
is  pride,  is  to  be  found  in  a  profound  respect  for  the  best 
possibility  and  plan  of  our  being,  which  involves  humil- 
ity. Ask  yourself.  You  are  dealing,  say,  with  one  of 
the  proud,  successful  men  of  whom  our  land  is  full,  —  a 
man  successful  in  some  one  of  the  low  and  sordid  planes 
of  effort  in  which  men  are  forever  struggling.  He  is 
proud  of  his  smartness,  proud  of  his  sharp,  hard,  unscru- 
pulousness.  Suppose  you  had,  for  instance,  the  mere  suc- 
cessful politician  of  the  day.  The  man  admires  himself. 
To  him  there  is  nothing  in  all  the  world  conceivable  so 


HUMnjTT.  845 

fine  and  complete  as  the  sort  of  life  that  he  is  living. 
That  is  his  vulgar  pride.  Will  you  make  that  man  hum- 
ble? You  may  hold  up  before  him  the  most  shining 
sharacters  the  world  has  ever  seen.  Marshal  the  white, 
unstained  names  before  him  and  they  do  not  abash  him. 
He  easily  counts  them  his  inferiors.  You  never  can 
abash  him  till  in  some  way  he  becomes  conscious  of  a 
purer,  honester,  and  nobler  self.  Never  until  by  some 
shock  or  other  his  life  is  broken  and  he  sees  what  he 
might  have  been,  sees  what  he  might  be.  In  some  still- 
ness of  the  night  when  a  better  nature  is  called  out  by 
God,  and  a  man  whom  he  recognizes  as  himself  and  yet 
who  shames  the  self  that  hved  his  yesterday,  stands  vis 
ible  before  him,  —  then  he  is  humbled.  In  some  revivai 
meeting  when  a  picture  of  heaven  or  a  picture  of  hell, 
painted  with  graphic  earnestness,  reaches  him  and  lets 
him  see  that  this  soul  of  his  which  he  has  kept  truckling 
for  dollars  or  for  offices  is  capable  of  heaven  and  capable 
of  hell,  when  the  dignity  of  his  responsibility  is  set  before 
him,  then  he  is  humbled. 

Let  us  be  sure  that  there  is,  laid  up  in  the  heart  of 
God,  an  image  and  a  thought  of  each  of  us,  which  if  we 
could  see  it  would  shame  and  humble  us.  We  go  on  our 
way,  we  sin  and  rejoice  in  sinning,  we  love  low  things,  we 
starve  our  souls  or  we  pollute  them,  we  wade  through 
mire  and  grovel  in  idleness  ;  but  all  the  while  there  lies 
God's  thought  of  us,  before  which  if  we  saw  it  we  must 
be  ashamed.  The  Christian  pilgi'ims  to  the  Jordan  are 
baptized  there  sometimes  in  a  pure  white  robe,  which 
then  is  laid  by  to  be  used  again  for  the  purpose  of 
their  buriah  They  are  to  be  wrapped  in  it  again  when 
they  are  dead.     After   ^U   the  sins   and   miseries   and 


8-16  HUMILITY. 

vicissitudes  of  earth  are  over,  they  must  come  back  at 
last  and  meet  that  symbol  of  the  purity  with  which  they 
started  their  new  life.  And  often,  with  that  robe  laid  up 
at  home,  they  must  stop  in  the  midst  of  some  foul  pas- 
sage of  their  life,  and  remember  how  white  it  is,  and  be 
humiliated.  So  it  is  the  sight  of  what  God  meant  us  to 
be  that  makes  us  ashamed  of  what  we  are.  And  it  is  the 
death  of  Christ  for  us,  the  preciousness  that  He  saw  in 
om*  souls  making  them  worthy  of  that  awful  sacrifice,  it 
is  that  which  lets  us  see  our  own  soul  as  He  sees  it  in  ita 
possibility,  and  so  lets  us  see  it  in  its  reality  as  he  sees  it 
too  and  put  our  pride  away  and  be  humble. 

I  have  spoken  of  the  way  in  which  Christianity  seta 
a  man  humbly  before  God  and  humbly  before  himself. 
The  name  humility  is  perhaps  more  generally,  at  least  as 
often,  used  to  describe  an  attitude  which  a  man  takes 
before  his  fellow-men ;  and  about  that  I  should  like  to 
say  something  next,  because  it  seems  to  me  that  is  often 
misconceived.  What  is  it  to  be  humble  or  to  have  a 
low  estimate  of  ourselves  before  one  another  ?  Is  it  any 
such  unreasonable  demand  as  this,  that  every  man  should 
really  think  that  he  is  worse,  wickeder,  duller  than  every 
one  of  his  fellows  whom  he  meets  ?  The  moment  that 
we  state  such  an  idea  we  see  its  impossibility.  It  con- 
fuses all  moral  distinctions,  and  shuts  our  eyes  to  facta. 
Are  we  bound  then  only  to  be  humble  before  those  whom 
we  do  cordially  recognize  as  wiser  and  better  than  our- 
selves ?  That  sets  us  at  once  to  most  invidious  discrimi- 
nations. No,  the  wisest  and  best  man  is  to  be  humbled 
before  the  lowest  and  most  degraded  of  his  brethren 
but  yet  he  is  not  to  make  beheve  to  himself  that  he  is 
no  higher  and  better  than  his  poor  brother,  he  is  not  t 


HUMILITT. 


847 


disown  the  good  work  that  God  has  done  for  him.     In 
what  must  his  humUity  consist,  then?     In  two  things. 
The  first  will  be  the  clear  perception  that  it  is  God  that 
has  made  him  to  differ  from  the  poor  creatui-e  before  him  i 
that  except  for  God's  help  he  must  have  been  as  bad  a« 
that.     The  sight  of  the  poor  wretch  must  make  h'm  feel 
again  the  tug  of  that  rope  of  dependence  which  bmdi 
him  to  God,  and  which  is  aU  that  keeps  him  out  of  the 
pit.     So  in  the  first  place  he  is  humbled  before  his  fel- 
low-man, because  the  sight  of  his  fellow-man  renews  hii 
humility  before  God.     And  the  second  thing  wiU  be  this. 
The  true  Christian  sees  all  the  children  of  his  Father 
worthy  of  that  Father's  love.     All  that  he  knows  about 
his  nature,  he  knows  also  about  theirs.     They,  too,  have 
souls,  dumb,  blind,  it  may  be,  but  still  worthy  of  the  Fa- 
ther's love.     For  them,  too,  Christ  has  died.     This  is  the 
sublime  revelation  of  his  faith  about  his  fellows.     And 
when  he  sees  them  thus,  he  sees  the  true  use  of  these 
powers,  of   aU  this  life  that  God   has  given  him.     To 
serve  this  hidden  life  of  all  his  brethren,  to  help  it  out 
into  some  sort  of  consciousness  and  action,  this  is  the  ob- 
ject to  which  he  wants  to  dedicate  his  saved  soul,  to  the 
salvation  of   the  souls  of   others.     And  this  is  his  hu- 
mility.    Honor  your  own  life  as  much  as  you  will,  only 
see  in  the  lives  of  other  men  a  value  and  essential  dig- 
nity that  makes  them  worthy  of  your  giving  yourself  up 
to  their  help  and  culture,  and  then  you  are  the  humble 
man.     If  you  beheve  with  all  your  heart  that  there  is 
nothing  in  you  too  good  to  be  employed  in  the  divine 
work  of  helping  some  lost  child  of  God  back  to  the  Fa- 
ther, then  you  have  really  learnt  the  humility  of  Christ. 
Do  you  remember  Him  ?     The  sapper  was  ended,  and 


348  HUMnjTT. 

strangely  on  that  solemn  night  the  disciples  had  fallet 
into  an  untimely  quarrel  which  of  them  should  be  the 
gi-eatest,  and  then  the  Lord  Himself  rose  from  the  table 
and  tied  the  towel  round  His  waist,  and  went  from  one 
wondering  disciple  to  another  and  washed  the  feet  of  all. 
And  then  He  interpreted  His  own  parable :  "If  I,  your 
Lord  and  Master,  have  washed  your  feet,  ye  ought  also  to 
wash  one  another's  feet."  Did  Jesus  compare  Himself 
with  each  of  those  disciples,  and  own  Himself  the  inferior 
of  each  ?  He  only  said  by  His  exquisite  action  that  there 
was  something  in  every  one  of  them,  in  serving  whicii 
even  His  divinity  found  no  inappropriate  employment. 
It  was  the  truth  of  His  whole  Incarnation  wrought  into  a 
homely  picture.  And  the  humility  of  Christ's  disciples, 
as  He  said,  is  one  in  nature  with  His  own.  The  delicate 
woman  for  very  love  of  Christ  nursing  Christ's  lowest 
brethren  in  the  most  dreadful  wards  of  the  hospital: 
the  brave  missionary  living  his  squalid  life  among  the 
Indians  in  their  wigwams ;  the  mother  giving  her  life  for 
the  child  the  Lord  has  given  her  ;  what  is  the  power  in 
them  all  but  this,  the  certainty  that  every  one  of  Christ's 
brethren  is  worthy  of  the  consecration  of  the  very  best 
that  Christ's  disciple  has  to  give  ?  Does  that  seem  hard 
for  you  to  believe?  Have  you  grown  weary  of  looking 
for  any  signs  of  promise  in  this  dull  mass  of  fellow-men 
and  withdrawn  yourself  into  some  luxury  of  self-culture, 
feeling  as  if  what  you  had  and  were  was  too  good  to  be 
wasted  upon  such  creatures  as  these  sick  and  poor  and 
ignorant  ?  You  must  be  rescued  from  this  proud  conceit, 
not  simply  by  counting  yourself  lower,  but  by  valuing 
more  highly  the  spiritual  natures  of  these  fellow-men. 
You  must  value  them  as  He  valued  them,  who  gave  His 


HUMILITT.  349 

life  for  them,  before  you  can  be  as  humbk  in  their  pres- 
ence as  He  was ;  and  that  can  come  only  by  making 
yourself  their  servant.  Only  he  who  puts  on  the  gar- 
ment of  humility  finds  how  worthily  it  clothes  his  life. 
Only  he  who  dedicates  himself  to  the  spiritual  service  of 
his  brethren,  simply  because  his  Master  tells  him  they 
are  worth  it,  comes  to  know  how  rich  those  natures  of 
his  brethren  are,  how  richly  they  are  worth  the  total 
giving  of  himself  to  them. 

This  seems  to  me  to  be  the  ever-increasing  joy  of  the 
minister's  life,  if  one  may  venture  for  once  to  speak  of 
his  own  work.  A  man  becomes  a  minister  because  God 
says,  "  Go  speak  in  the  temple  the  words  of  this  life." 
He  begins  the  service  of  his  fellow-men  in  pure  obe- 
dience to  God's  command,  but  the  joy  and  ever-richening 
delight  of  the  ministers  work  is  in  finding  how  deep 
this  human  soul  to  which  his  Lord  has  sent  him  really  is. 
The  nature  to  which  he  ministers,  as  he  meets  its  exhibi- 
tions here  and  there,  is  always  amazing  him  with  its 
spiritual  capacity,  is  always  proving  itself  capable  and 
worthy  of  so  much  better  and  higher  ministry  than  he 
can  give  it.  So  the  minister  of  the  Gospel  finds  his  own 
numility  and  the  delightfulness  of  his  work  ever  increas- 
ing together 

And  this  suggests  one  other  point,  which  is  the  last  that 
I  shall  speak  of.  I  cannot  but  think  that  one  of  the 
truest  ways  in  which  Christianity  has  made  humility  at 
once  a  commoner  and  a  nobler  grace  has  been  in  the  way 
b  Trhich  it  has  furnished  work  for  the  higher  powers 
of  man,  which  used  to  be  idle  and  only  ponder  proudly 
on  themselves.  Idleness  standing  in  the  midst  of  unat- 
tempted  tasks  is  always  proud.     Work  is  always  tending 


350  HUMILITY. 

to  humility.  Work  touches  the  ke;y8  of  endless  activityi 
opens  the  infinite,  and  stands  awe-struck  before  the  im- 
mensity of  what  there  is  to  do.  Work  brings  a  man 
into  the  good  realm  of  facts.  Work  takes  the  dreamy 
youth  who  is  growing  proud  in  his  closet  over  one  or  two 
iprouting  powers  which  he  has  discovered  in  himself,  and 
■ets  him  out  among  the  gigantic  needs  and  the  vast  pro 
cesses  of  the  world,  and  makes  him  feel  his  littleness. 
Work  opens  the  measureless  fields  of  knowledge  and  skill 
that  reach  far  out  of  our  sight.  I  am  sure  we  all  know 
the  fine,  calm,  sober  humbleness  of  men  who  have  really 
tried  themselves  against  the  tasks  of  life.  It  was  great 
in  Paul,  and  in  Luther,  and  in  Cromwell.  It  is  some- 
thing that  never  comes  into  the  character,  never  shows 
in  the  face  of  a  man  who  has  never  worked.  Is  not  this 
what  you  would  do  for  a  boy  whom  you  saw  getting 
proud,  —  «et  him  to  work  ?  He  might  be  so  poor  of  stuff 
that  he  would  be  proud  of  his  work,  poorly  as  he  would 
do  it.  For  the  matter  of  that,  men  of  poor  stuff  may  be 
proud  of  anything,  proud  even  of  what  they  call  their 
humility.  But  if  he  were  really  great  enough  to  be 
humble  at  all,  his  work  would  bring  him  to  humility. 
He  would  be  brought  face  to  face  with  facts.  He  would 
measure  himself  against  the  eternal  pillars  of  the  uni- 
verse. He  would  learn  the  blessed  lesson  of  his  own 
littleness  in  the  way  in  which  it  is  always  learnt  most 
blessedly,  by  learning  the  largeness  of  larger  things. 
And  all  this,  which  the  ordinary  occupations  of  life  do 
for  our  ordinary  powers,  Christianity,  with  the  work  that 
it  furnishes  for  our  affections  and  our  hopes,  does  for  the 
higher  parts  of  us. 

It  is  so  easy  for  as  to  go  through  the  motions  of 


HUMILITT.  351 

humility.  It  is—  I  will  not  say  so  hard — but  it  is  so 
serious  and  so  great  a  thing  to  be  really  humble.  I 
have  tried  to  show  it  to  you  as  the  consummate  Christian 
grace ;  nay,  rather  as  the  star  in  the  zenith,  where  all  th# 
sweep  of  Christian  graces  meets.  Do  you  not  see  that  it 
takes  a  whole  Christian  to  be  wholly  humble  ?  Christ 
came  and  plucked  out  of  the  depths  of  men's  contempt 
this  perfect  quality  and  set  it  on  the  very  summit  of  the 
hill  of  grace.  I  have  tried  to  show  you  how  He  did  it. 
He  set  men  close  to  God,  to  their  true  selves,  to  the  souls 
of  their  brethren,  to  the  immensity  of  duty ;  and  He 
said  to  them  there,  what  there  they  understood,  "  Be 
humble  I " 

It  was  as  if  He  took  a  proud,  fretful  man  out  of  the 
worrying  life  of  the  selfish  city  and  set  him  among  the 
solenm  mountains,  and  the  mountains  brought  to  him  the 
blessed  peace  of  humility  and  the  sense  of  his  own  insig- 
nificance. 

It  seems  to  come  to  this,  that  Christianity  is  the 
religion  of  the  broadest  truthfulness.  It  does  not  set 
men  at  any  work  of  mere  resolution,  saying,  "  Come, 
now,  let  us  be  humble."  That  would  but  multiply  the 
endless  specimens  of  useless  self-mortification.  But  true 
Christianity  puts  men  face  to  face  with  the  humbling 
facts,  the  great  realities,  and  then  humility  comes  upon 
the  soul,  as  darkness  comes  on  the  face  of  the  earth,  not 
because  the  earth  has  made  up  its  mind  to  be  dark,  but 
because  it  has  rolled  into  the  great  shadow. 

It  is  the  narrowness  of  our  life  that  makes  us  proud 
I  should  think  one  of  you  merchants  would  be  proud  of 
his  successful  business  if  he  saw  nothing  beyond  it.     I 
fthould  think  you  men  and  women  would  be  proud  of  your 


S52  HUMIUTT. 

Bplendid  houses  if  you  look  no  farther.  But  if  you  could 
only  see  God  forever  present  in  your  life,  and  Jesus  dying 
for  your  soul,  and  your  soul  worth  Jesus'  dying  for,  and 
the  souls  of  your  brethren  precious  in  His  sight,  and  the 
whole  universe  teeming  with  work  for  Him,  then  must 
come  the  humility  of  the  Christian.  To  that  humility 
let  US  devote  ourselves,  for  in  a  humility  like  that  aloii« 
b  peace. 


' 


: 


XX. 

THE  POSITITENESS  OF  THE  DIVINE  LIFE. 

■  Thi«  I  say  then,  Walk  in  the  Spirit,  and  ye  shall  not  fulfil  the  lust  ot 
Ike  flesh."  — Galatians  t.  16. 

We  very  often  forget,  when  we  are  wondering  whether 
Christianity  is  really  a  religion  for  all  men,  capable  of 
meeting  all  kinds  of  characters  in  every  kind  of  age,  how 
far  that  question  went  towards  its  settlement  even  in  the 
times  of  the  New  Testament.  We  forget  what  a  great 
variety  of  people  became  subject  to  the  influences  of  the 
Gospel  even  then.  We  open  one  epistle  after  another,  and 
always  it  is  a  different  order  and  kind,  often  a  wholly  dif- 
ferent race  of  men,  to  whom  the  new  epistle  is  addressed. 
These  Galatians,  for  instance,  who  were  they  ?  Years  ago 
a  party  of  Gauls  from  the  Pyrenees  had  wandered  east- 
ward, and  after  many  violent  experiences  had  settled 
down  here  among  the  mountain  fastnesses  of  Asia  Minor. 
There  were  some  Jews  living  among  them,  but  mainly 
they  were  of  another  race,  —  a  fierce,  brave,  generous,  un- 
tamed nest  of  barbarians.  It  is  strange  always  to  light 
on  a  new  company  of  men,  and  see  how  like  they  are  to 
the  men  we  know.  Through  the  doorway  of  St.  Paul's 
•pistle  we  enter  into  the  homes  of  these  wild  mountain- 
eera ;  and  when  we  once  get  over  the  wildness  of  theii 
life,  how  clear  their  human  nature  stands  before  us.  No 
one  can  read  the  epistle  without  feeling  sure  that  St.  Paul 


5554  THE  POSITIVENESS  OF   THE  DIVINE  LIFE. 

liked  them  for  the  headlong  and  enthusiastic  franknesi 
which  made  the  best  part,  as  it  made  the  worst  part,  of 
their  character,  and  with  which  he  had  much  in  common. 

What  sort  of  people  were  they,  then?  "  Walk  in  the 
Bpirit,  and  ye  shall  not  fulfil  the  lust  of  the  flesh."  The 
lusts  of  the  flesh !  Here  they,  are  at  work  in  Galatia, 
just  as  they  are  among  us:  the  same  temptations,  the 
game  vexatious,  exacting,  persecuting  demands  of  this 
fleshly  body  in  which  we  all  live.  And  here  are  men 
who  have  so  had  their  deeper  nature  stirred,  their 
deeper  ambition  aroused,  that  they  are  trying  not  to  ful- 
fil the  lusts  of  the  flesh.  That  struggle  to  be  a  self-con- 
trolling man,  and  not  a  self-indulgent  brute,  which  is 
the  glorious  thing  in  all  human  history,  is  going  on  here 
in  Galatia.  What  multitudes  of  strugglers  there  have 
been  in  that  struggle,  in  what  multitudes  of  ways !  Leave 
out  that  struggle  in  its  various  forms  from  the  life  of  man, 
and  what  would  the  life  of  man  be  worth?  Here  are 
these  Galatians  fighting  the  everlasting  human  fight  in 
their  remote  corner  of  the  world,  trying  to  be  men  and 
not  brutes ;  and  here  is  Paul,  their  friend,  their  teacher, 
trying  to  tell  them  how.  "  Walk  in  the  Spirit,  and  ye 
shall  not  fulfil  the  lusts  of  the  flesh." 

It  is  hardly  possible  to  conceive  any  two  human  lota 
more  different  than  that  of  the  wild  Galatian  reading  this 
epistle  in  his  smoky  hut,  and  that  of  us  quiet  Bostoniane 
reading  it  in  our  quiet  homes.  But  if  our  battle  is  the 
aame  as  theirs,  if  the  same  lusts  of  the  flesh  are  still  here, 
as  well  as  there,  to  be  met  and  conquered,  it  is  good  for 
ns,  as  well  as  for  them,  to  try  and  see  what  help  we  can 
gather  out  of  the  words  of  St.  Paul. 

The  point  that  strikes  us  in  this  passage,  and  the  point 


THE   POSITIVENESS   OF   THE   DIVINE   LIFE.  355 

which  I  want  to  make  my  subject  of  this  morning,  is  the 
poeitiveness  of  Paul's  morality.  It  is  so  wonderfully  bold 
and  strong.  There  are  two  ways  of  dealing  with  every 
vice  that  troubles  us,  in  either  ourselves  or  others.  On» 
is  to  set  to  work  directly  to  destroy  the  vice  ;  that  is  th« 
amative  way.  The  other  is  to  bring  in  as  overwhelm- 
ingly as  possible  the  opposite  virtue,  and  so  to  crowd  and 
fitifle  and  drown  out  the  vice  ;  that  is  the  positive  way. 
Now  there  can  be  no  doubt  about  St.  Paul.  Here  comei 
his  poor  Galatian  fighting  with  his  lust  of  the  flesh.  How 
shall  he  kiU  it  ?  St.  Paul  says  not,  "  Do  as  few  fleshly 
things  as  you  can,"  setting  him  out  on  a  course  of  repres- 
sion ;  but,  "  Do  just  as  many  spiritual  things  as  you  can," 
opening  before  him  the  broad  gates  of  a  life  of  posi- 
tive endeavor.  And  when  we  have  thoroughly  compre- 
hended the  difference  of  those  two  methods,  and  seen 
how  distinctly  St.  Paul  chose  one  instead  of  the  other,  we 
have  laid  hold  on  one  of  the  noblest  characteristics  of  his 
treatment  of  humanity,  one  that  he  had  gained  most  di- 
rectly from  his  Lord.  I  should  despair  of  making  any 
one  see  the  distinction  who  did  not  know  it  in  his  own 
experience.  Everywhere  the  negative  and  the  positive 
methods  of  treatment  stand  over  against  each  other,  and 
men  choose  between  them.  Here  is  a  man  who  is  be- 
set by  doubts,  perhaps  about  the  very  fundamental  truths 
of  Christianity.  He  may  attack  all  the  objections  in 
turn,  and  at  last  succeed  in  proving  that  Christianity  \a 
not  false.  That  is  negative.  Or  he  may  gather  about 
him  the  assurance  of  all  that  his  religion  has  done  and 
sweep  away  all  his  doubts  with  the  complete  conviction 
that  Christianity  is  true.  That  is  positive,  and  that  ia 
better.     A  man  has  a  grudge  against  you,  inveterate  and 


356  THE   POSITIVENESS  OF   THE   DIVINE   LIFE. 

strong.  You  may  attack  his  special  grievance  and  fcrj 
to  remove  it ;  or  you  may  try  not  to  show  him  that  you 
meant  him  no  harm,  but  by  laborious  kindness  that  you 
mean  him  every  good,  and  so  soften  his  obstinacy.  A 
church  is  full  of  errors  and  foolish  practices.  It  is  possi 
ble  to  attack  those  follies  outright,  showing  conclusively 
how  foolish  they  are  ;  or  it  is  possible,  and  it  is  surely 
better,  to  wake  up  the  true  spiritual  life  in  that  church, 
which  shall  itself  shed  those  follies  and  cast  them  out, 
3r  at  least  rob  them  of  their  worsi  harmfuluess. 

It  is  strange  how  far  and  wide  this  necessity  of  choos- 
ing between  the  positive  and  negative  methods  of  treat- 
ment runs.  In  matters  of  taste,  for  instance,  there  are 
two  distinct  ways  of  trying  to  perfect  the  tasteful  man. 
One  is  by  the  repression  of  what  is  in  bad  taste ;  the  other 
is  by  the  earnest  fostering  of  what  is  good,  —  the  method 
of  repression  and  the  method  of  stimulus.  And  every- 
body knows  that  no  groat  effect  of  human  genius  was 
ever  yet  produced  except  in  the  latter,  larger  way.  A 
cold  and  hard  and  limited  correctness,  a  work  "  faultily 
faultless,"  weak  and  petty  and  timid,  is  all  that  the  other 
methods  make.  For,  whether  in  manners  or  in  art,  that 
which  appears  at  first  as  coarseness  is  very  often  the 
strength  of  the  whole  work.  To  repress  it  for  its  coarse- 
ness is  to  make  the  whole  feeble  while  we  make  it  fine. 
To  keep  its  strength  and  fill  its  strength  with  fineness^ 
this  is  the  positive  method  of  the  truest  taste. 

We  are  witnessing  constantly  the  application  of  th« 
same  principle  to  the  matter  of  reform,  the  breaking  up 
of  bad  habits  in  an  individual  or  in  a  community  All 
prohibitory  measures  are  negative.  That  they  have  their 
Hie  no  one  can  doubt.     That  they  liave  their  limits  is 


THE   POSITIVENESS   OF   THE  DIVINE   LIFE.  857 

juflt  as  clear.  He  who  thinks  that  nothing  but  the  moral 
raetlioda  for  the  prevention  of  intemperance  and  crime 
can  do  the  work  is  a  mere  theorist  of  the  closet  and 
knows  very  little  about  the  actual  state  of  human  nature. 
But,  on  the  other  hand,  the  man  who  thinks  that  any 
strictest  system  of  prohibition,  most  strictly  kept  in  force, 
oould  permanently  keep  men  from  drink,  or  any  other  vice^ 
knows  Uttle  of  human  nature  either.  That  nature  is  too 
active  and  too  live  to  be  kept  right  by  mere  negations. 
You  cannot  kill  any  one  of  its  appetites  by  merely  starv- 
ing it.  You  must  give  it  its  true  food,  and  so  only  can 
you  draw  it  off  from  the  poison  that  it  covets.  Here 
comes  in  the  absolute  necessity  of  providing  rational  and 
cheap  amusements  for  the  people  whom  our  philanthro- 
pists are  trying  to  draw  off  from  the  tavern  and  the 
gambling-house.  Pictures,  parks,  museums,  libraries, 
music,  a  healthier  and  happier  religion,  a  brighter,  sun- 
nier tone  to  all  our  life,  —  these  are  the  positive  powers 
which  must  come  in  with  every  form  of  prohibition  and 
restraint  before  our  poorer  people  can  be  brought  to  live 
a  sensible  and  sober  life.  Look  at  the  lives  that  our  rich 
people  live.  It  is  not  any  form  of  prohibition,  legal  or 
social,  that  keeps  them  from  disgusting  and  degrading 
rice.  It  is  the  fulness  of  their  lives,  the  warmth,  glow, 
comfort,  and  abundance  of  their  homes,  the  occupation  of 
their  minds,  the  positive  and  not  the  negative,  the  inter- 
est and  plenty  which  the  poor  man  never  knows.  Before 
you  or  I  dare  blame  him,  or  despise  him,  we  must,  in 
imagination,  empty  our  lives  like  his,  and  ask  what  sort 
of  people  we  should  be  in  the  squalor  of  his  garret,  and 
the  comfortlessness  and  hopelessness  of  a  lot  like  his. 
We  see  the  same  principle,  the  superiority  of  the  po& 


868  THE  POSITIVENESS   OF  THE  DIVINE  LiFE. 

itive  to  the  negative,  constantly  illustrated  in  matters  of 
opinion.  How  is  it  that  people  change  their  opinions, 
give  up  what  they  have  steadfastly  believed,  and  come  to 
believe  something  very  different,  perhaps  its  very  oppo 
site?  I  think  we  all  have  been  surprised,  if  we  havs 
thought  about  it,  by  the  very  small  number  of  cases  in 
which  men  deliberately  abandon  positions  because  those 
positions  have  been  disproved  and  seem  to  them  no  longer 
tenable.  And  even  when  such  cases  do  occur,  the  effect 
is  apt  to  be  not  good,  but  bad.  The  man  abandons  his 
disproved  idea,  but  takes  no  other  in  its  stead ;  until,  in 
spite  of  their  better  judgment,  many  good  men  have  been 
brought  to  feel  that,  rather  than  use  the  power  of  mere 
negation  and  turn  the  believer  in  an  error  into  a  believer 
in  nothing,  they  would  let  their  friend  go  on  believing  hi^ 
falsehood,  since  it  was  better  to  believe  something,  how- 
ever stupidly,  than  to  disbelieve  everything,  however 
shrewdly.  But  what  then?  How  do  men  change  their 
opinions  ?  Have  you  not  seen  ?  Holding  still  their  old 
belief,  they  come  somehow  into  the  atmosphere  of  a 
clearer  and  a  richer  faith.  That  better  faith  surrounds 
them,  fills  them,  presses  on  them  with  its  own  convinc- 
ingness. They  learn  to  love  it,  long  to  receive  it,  try  to 
open  their  hands  and  hearts  just  enough  to  take  it  in 
and  hold  it  along  with  the  old  doctrine  which  they  have 
no  idea  of  giving  up.  They  think  that  they  are  holding 
both.  They  persuade  themselves  that  they  have  found 
a  way  of  reconciling  the  old  and  the  new,  which  have 
been  thought  unreconcilable.  Perhaps  they  go  on  think- 
ing 80  all  their  lives.  But  perhaps  some  day  something 
startles  them,  and  they  awake  to  find  that  the  old  is 
gone,  and  that  the  new  opinion  has  become  their  opinion 


THE  POSITIVENESS   OF   THE  DIVINE   LIFE.  359 

by  its  own  positive  convincing  power.  There  has  been  no 
violence  in  the  process,  nor  any  melancholy  gap  of  in- 
fidelity between.  Dear  friends,  if  you  have  any  friend 
who  believes  an  error,  and  whom  you  want  to  make  be- 
lieve the  truth,  for  his  sake,  for  your  own  sake,  for  the 
truth's  sake,  I  beg  you  deal  with  him  positively  and  not 
negatively.  Do  not  try  only  to  disprove  his  error.  Per* 
haps  that  error,  because  no  error  is  wholly  erroneous,  is 
better  for  him  than  no  faith  at  all.  But  make  your  truth 
live  and  convincing.  Through  every  entrance  force  its 
life  home  on  his  life.  Let  him  hear  it  in  your  voice,  see 
it  in  your  face,  feel  it  in  your  whole  life.  Make  it  claim 
its  true  kinship  with  the  truth  that  is  lying  somewhere 
in  the  midst  of  all  his  error.  Who  would  go  a  hundred 
miles  merely  to  make  a  Mohammedan  disbelieve  Moham 
med  ?  "Who  would  not  go  half  round  the  world  to  make 
him  believe  Christ  and  know  the  richness  of  the  Saviour? 

It  seems  to  me  that  there  is  something  so  sublimely 
positive  in  Nature.  She  never  kills  for  the  mere  sake  of 
killing ;  but  every  death  is  but  one  step  in  the  vast  weav- 
ing of  the  web  of  life.  She  has  no  process  of  destruction 
which,  as  you  turn  it  to  the  other  side  and  look  at  it  in 
what  you  know  to  be  its  truer  light,  you  do  not  see  to  be 
a  process  of  construction.  She  gets  rid  of  her  wastes  by 
ever  new  plans  of  nutrition.  This  is  what  gives  her 
Buch  a  courageous,  hopeful,  and  enthusiastic  look,  and 
makes  men  love  her  as  a  mother  and  not  fear  her  as  a 
tyrant.  They  see  by  small  signs,  and  dimly  feel,  thia 
positiveness  of  her  workings  which  it  is  the  glory  of  nat- 
ural science  to  reveal  more  and  more. 

And  now,  if  we  have  illustrated  enough,  and  under- 
stand our  principle,  let  us  come  to  St.  Paul  and  his  Go»« 


360  THE  POSITIVENESS   OF   THE  DIVINE   LIFE. 

pel.  In  Him,  and  in  all  the  New  Testament,  there  ii 
nothing  more  beautiful  than  the  clear,  open,  broad  way 
in  which  the  positive  culture  of  human  character  is 
adopted  and  employed.  If  you  have  ever  really  entered 
into  sympathy  with  your  New  Testament,  you  know,  you 
©ertainly  have  sometimes  felt,  the  thing  I  mean.  We 
can  conceive  of  a  God  standing  over  His  moral  creatures, 
and  whenever  they  did  anything  that  was  wrong,  showed 
any  bad  temper  or  disposition,  putting  a  heavy  hand  on 
the  malignant  manifestation  and  stifling  it ;  and  so  at 
last  bringing  them  to  a  tight,  narrow,  timid  goodness,  — 
the  God  of  repression.  We  conceive  of  such  a  God,  and 
we  know  as  we  read  the  New  Testament  that  the  God  of 
the  New  Testament  is  not  that.  We  can  conceive  of  an 
other  God  who  should  lavish  and  pour  upon  His  children 
the  chances  and  temptations  to  be  good,  in  every  way 
should  make  them  see  the  beauty  of  goodness,  should 
so  make  life  identical  with  goodness  that  every  moment 
spent  in  wickedness  should  seem  a  waste,  almost  a  death, 
should  so  open  His  fatherhood  and  make  it  real  to  them 
that  the  spontaneousness  of  the  father's  holiness  should 
be  reechoed  in  the  child,  —  not  the  God  of  restraint,  but 
the  God  whose  symbols  should  be  the  sun,  the  light,  the 
friend,  the  fire,  everything  that  is  stimulating,  everything 
that  fosters  and  encourages  and  helps.  We  conceive  of 
such  a  God,  and  when  we  read  in  the  New  Testament,  io, 
that  is  the  God  whose  story  is  written  there,  the  God 
whose  glory  we  see  in  the  face  of  Jesus  Christ.  The  dis- 
dnction  is  everywhere.  Not  by  merely  trying  not  to  sin, 
but  by  entering  farther  and  farther  into  the  new  life,  in 
which,  when  it  is  completed,  sin  becomes  impossible 
not  by  merely  weeding  out  wickedness,  but  by  a  new  and 


THE   POSITIVENESS  OF   THE   Dl\niE   LIFE.  361 

supernatural  cultivation  of  holiness,  does  the  saint  of  the 
New  Testament  walk  on  the  ever-ascending  pathway  of 
growing  Christliness  and  come  at  last  perfectly  to  Christ 
This  is  the  true  difference  between  law  and  grace ;  and 
the  New  Testament  is  the  book  of  grace.  Oh,  that  the 
richest  and  livest  and  most  personal  word  in  all  the  lan- 
guage did  not  sound  so  meagre,  dead,  and  formal. 

And  this  character  of  the  New  Testament  must  be  at 
the  bottom  in  conformity  with  human  nature.  The  Bible 
and  its  Christianity  are  not  in  contradiction  against  the 
nature  of  the  man  they  try  to  save.  Let  us  never  believe 
they  are.  They  are  at  war  with  all  his  corruptions,  and, 
in  his  own  interest,  though  against  his  stubborn  will^  they 
are  forever  laboring  to  assert  and  reestablish  his  tme 
self.  And  in  this  fundamental  character  of  the  New 
Testament,  by  which  it  is  a  book  not  of  prohibitions  but 
of  eager  inspirations,  there  comes  out  a  deep  harmony 
between  it  and  the  heart  of  man.  For  man's  heart  is 
always  rebelling  against  repression  as  a  continuous  and 
regular  thing.  Man  is  willing  to  make  self-sacrifices  for 
a  certain  temporary  purpose.  The  merchant  will  give  up 
his  home,  the  student  shut  his  books,  the  mother  leave 
her  household  for  a  time,  to  do  some  certain  work.  The 
world  is  full  of  self-sacrifice,  of  the  suppression  of  desires, 
the  forcing  of  natural  inclinations  ;  but  all  the  while 
under  this  crust  the  fire  is  burning  ;  all  the  time  under 
this  self-sacrifice,  there  is  a  restless,  hungry  sense  that  i 
is  not  right,  that  it  cannot  be  final ;  there  is  a  crying  out 
for  self-indulgence.  All  the  time  there  is  a  grea*  human 
sense  that  not  suppression  but  expression  is  the  :rue  life. 
Every  now  and  then,  in  the  most  guarded  and  self-sacri- 
ficing men,  that  restlessness  breaks  out,  and  through  th« 


862  THE  POSITIVENKSS   OF   THE   DIVINE   LIFE. 

itrictest  moral  prohibitions,  which  have  been  growinf^ 
hard  and  strong  for  a  whole  lifetime  of  obedience,  tho 
imprisoned  spontaneity  bursts  forth ;  and  some  wild,  fla- 
grant act  is  the  man's  assertion  that  no  law  or  practice  of 
self-sacrifice  can  kill  or  has  a  right  to  kill  the  man's  Hv« 
self.  This  I  see  everywhere  in  man's  history,  and  this 
it  seems  to  me  as  if  the  Gospel  so  exactly  met.  It  cornea 
to  a  young  man  who  is  just  becoming  aware  of  what  a 
forced  and  artificial  and  arbitrary  state  of  things  there  is 
in  this  world  where  his  work  is  just  beginning.  He  has 
just  found  out  that  he  has  a  heart  full  of  passions  and  de- 
sires ;  and  he  is  just  growing  half  indignant  and  half  per- 
plexed as  all  the  moral  laws  of  life,  all  the  decencies  of 
society,  all  the  proverbs  and  traditions  of  his  fathers 
gather  up  about  him  and  give  him  their  good  advice. 
"  You  will  find  in  yourself,"  they  say,  "  this  passion. 
It  is  there  simply  to  be  sacrificed  and  killed."  "  You 
will  find  that  appetite.  It  is  never  to  be  gratified." 
"  You  will  find  such  and  such  a  desire.  Your  duty  in 
life  is  to  watch  for  that  desire's  rising,  and  every  time  it 
shows  its  head  to  smite  it  and  drive  it  back."  "  You  are 
full  of  the  lusts  of  the  flesh.  They  are  put  into  you  that 
you  may  not  fulfil  them."  He  takes  this  programme  for 
his  life  and  starts  out  to  perform  it.  It  is  not  very  in- 
spiring surely.  Its  hard  negations  little  suit  the  eager  de- 
sire to  be  doing  something  strong  and  positive  which  be- 
longs to  his  eager  years.  It  is  taking  a  brave  young  3ol 
dier  who  wants  to  be  out  in  the  very  front  scaling  the 
enemy's  ramparts,  and  setting  him  to  guard  the  bag- 
gage in  the  rear.  That  is  the  low  and  spiritless  tone  of 
so  much  of  the  negative  morality  which  rules  all  the  way 
up  from  the  teaching  of  the  nursery  to  the  doctors  nl 


THE   POSITIVENESS  OF   THE  DIVINE  LITE.  86S 

moral  philosophy  in  their  college  chairs.  It  makes  all 
enthusiasm  of  virtue  impossible,  and  instead  of  letting  the 
effort  to  be  good  become,  as  it  ought  to  be,  the  brightest, 
keenest,  and  most  interesting  search  that  man  can  UL-der- 
take,  it  makes  it  the  dull,  heavy  thing  which  we  all  see  it 
and  all  feel  it,— the  dreary,  hopeless  trying  not  to  be  bad 
which  drags  so  heavily  and  fails  so  constantly. 

The  young  man  accepts  this  theory  of  life,  this  nega- 
tive theory  of  pure  repression  for  a  while ;  but  by  and 
by  there  comes  a  great  explosion  and  remonstrance.    "  It 
cannot  be,"  he  says.    "  These  passions  cannot  have  been 
given  me  just  to  be  killed.     These  strong  desires  are  not 
in  me  only  to  be  sacrificed.  Why  am  I  living  this  guarded 
life  of  circumspection  ?    Here  I  am  saying  No  !  to  all  my 
strongest  appetites,  and  for  what  ?   to  make   this  poor, 
tame,  colorless,  half-animate   conventionality   of   virtue 
which  is  worth  nothing  after  it  is  made.     It  is  not  right. 
The  law  of  life  cannot  be  endless  self-restraint,  endless 
self-disappointment.     I  must   try   something   freer   and 
more  natural.    Let  me  let  myself  go.    Let  me  give  up  re- 
straint and  try  indulgence.     Let  every  passion  have  ita 
way."     And  then  what  comes?    Ah,  you  all  know :  that 
wild  unbridled  life  that  seems  so  free  and  is  such  a  slav- 
ery ;  that  endless  cheating  of  one's  self  to  think  that  he 
is  happy  in  his  dissipation  when  he  knows  that   he   is 
wretched ;  that  reckless  flinging  away  of  health  and  vital- 
ity till  they  are  all  gone,  and  the  worn-out  young  man 
■ettles  down  into  a  middle  age  of  enforced  and  dreary 
decency,  and  expects  an  old  age  of  imbecility  and  pain. 
And  yet  at  the  back  of  that  young  man's  outbreak  there 
was  a  certain  clutching  at  what  really  is  a  truth.     He 
ooold  not  believe  that  self-mortification  was  the  drearj 


jU4  THE  POSITIVENESS  OF   THE  DIVINE  LIFE, 

law  of  life.  He  did  not  believe  that  the  killing  of  th« 
powers  and  appetites  which  He  had  given  them  was  the 
education  God  intended  for  His  children.  And  now  what 
has  the  New  Testament,  what  has  Christianity,  what  has 
Christ  to  say  to  that  young,  hot,  and  j'-ebellious  soul  ?  Any* 
thing  ?  Remember,  his  is  just  the  soul  that  is  running 
ite  career  of  ruin  in  our  schools,  our  colleges,  our  stores, 
along  our  grandest  and  our  meanest  streets.  It  seems  to 
me  I  can  see  Christ  approach  that  man,  that  just  rebell- 
ious boy.  I  do  not  hear  Him  use  such  words  of  utter  and 
unsparing  rebuke  as  I  have  many  a  time  heard  lavished 
on  youthful  dissipation,  and  yet  his  face  is  sadder  over 
that  poor  boy's  wandering  than  father's  or  mother's  face 
ever  grew.  My  brother,  I  can  hear  him  say,  you  are  not 
wholly  wrong.  Nay,  at  the  bottom,  you  are  right.  Self- 
mortification,  self-sacrifice,  is  not  the  first  or  final  law  ol 
life.  You  are  right  when  you  think  that  these  appetites 
and  passions  were  not  put  into  you  merely  to  be  killed, 
and  that  the  virtue  which  only  comes  by  their  restraint 
is  a  poor,  colorless,  and  feeble  thing.  You  are  right  in 
thinking  that  not  to  restrain  yourself  and  to  refrain  from 
doing,  but  to  utter  yourself,  to  act,  to  do,  is  the  purpose  of 
your  being  in  the  world.  Only,  my  brother,  this  is  not 
the  self  you  are  to  utter,  these  are  not  the  acts  you  are 
to  do.  There  is  a  part  in  you  made  to  think  deeply, 
made  to  feel  nobly,  made  to  be  charitable  and  chivalric, 
made  to  worship,  to  pity,  and  to  love.  You  are  not  ut- 
tering yourself  while  you  keep  that  better  seif  in  chains 
and  only  let  these  lower  passions  free.  Let  me  renew 
those  nobler  powers,  and  then  believe  with  all  your  heart 
and  might  that  to  send  out  those  powers  into  the  in- 
tensest  exercise  is  the  one  worthy  purpose  of  your  liiec 


THE  POSITIVENESS  OF   THE  DIVINE  LIFE. 


36i: 


Then  these  passions,  which  you  are  indulging  because  you 
cannot  believe  that  you  were  meant  to  give  your  whole 
life  up  to  bridhng  them,  will  need  no  forcible  bridling,  and 
yet,  owning  their  masters  in  the  higher  powers  which 
come  out  to  act,  they  will  be  content  to  serve  them.  You 
^11  not  fulfil  your  passions  any  longer,  but  the  reason 
will  not  be  that  you  have  resumed  the  weary  guard  over 
your  passions  which  you  tried  to  keep  of  old.  It  will  be 
that  you  have  given  yourself  up  so  utterly  to  the  seeking 
after  holiness  that  these  lower  passions  have  lost  their 
hold  upon  you.  You  will  not  so  much  have  crushed  the 
carnal  as  embraced  the  spiritual.  I  shall  have  made  you 
free.  You  will  be  walking  in  the  spirit,  and  so  will  not 
fulfil  the  lusts  of  the  flesh. 

Is  not  this  Christ's  method?  Is  not  this  the  tone  of  His 
encouraging  voice?  "Whosoever  committeth  sin  is  the 
servant  of  sin,"  but  "  Ye  shall  know  the  truth,  and  the 
truth  shall  make  you  free."  It  is  the  positive  attainment 
and  not  the  negative  surrender.  It  is  the  seK  indulgence 
of  the  highest  and  not  the  self-surrender  of  the  lowest 
that  is  the  great  end  of  the  Gospel.  And  yet  I  know 
that  there  comes  up  to  you  at  once  very  much  in  the 
teachings  of  Christ  and  in  the  whole  spirit  of  Christianity 
which  seems  to  contradict  what  I  am  saying.  Has  not 
the  religion  of  Jesus  always  been  called  the  very  religion 
of  self-sacrifice  ?  Is  not  self -surrender  exalted  into  a 
firtue  and  crowned  with  glory  as  it  never  was  in  any 
other  faith  ?  That  certainly  is  true  I  But  we  want  to 
read  the  Gospels  far  more  wisely  than  we  have  read  them 
yet  unless  we  see  that  in  Christ's  teaching  self-sacrifice 
is  always  temporary  and  provisional,  merely  the  clearing 
the  way  for  the  positive  culture  which  alone  is  creative 


866  THE  POSITIVENESS   OF   THE  DIVINE  LIFE. 

of  those  great  results  of  spiritual  life  which  the  Lord 
loved.  The  right  hand  is  to  be  cut  off,  the  right  eye  is 
to  be  plucked  out,  some  part,  some  organ  of  the  body  ia 
to  be  put  to  death,  but  it  is  only  that  the  man  may  *'  en- 
ter into  life."  The  life,  and  not  the  death,  is  the  object. 
And  just  this  is  the  reason  why  self-sacrifice  in  Chris- 
tianity has  acquired  a  glory  that  it  never  had  before ; 
because  it  has  looked  beyond  its  own  negations,  and  min- 
istered to,  and  caught  some  of  the  splendor  of,  the  posi- 
tive culture  that  was  to  follow  it ;  as  John  the  Baptist 
ministered  to  and  caught  some  of  the  beauty  of  the 
coming  Christ.  Indeed,  the  negative  discipline,  the  dis- 
cipline of  prohibitions,  is  the  John  the  Baptist  who  merely 
cries,  "  Make  straight  in  the  desert  a  highway  for  our 
God,"  and  then  the  positive  Christ  comes.  The  negative 
decreases  that  the  positive  may  increase.  How  easily 
we  see  the  difference.  Two  young  men  restrain  their  pas- 
sions. You  ask  one  of  them,  "  Why  do  you  deny  your- 
self this  dissipation  ?  "  and  his  answer  is,  "  Because  it  ia 
wrong.  I  must  not  do  it."  And  you  respect  him  for 
his  self-control.  You  ask  the  other  and  he  says  some- 
thing different,  though  the  course  of  life  to  which  it 
brings  him  is  just  the  same.  He  says,  "  I  am  so  busy 
about  other  things  that  I  love  better.  I  have  greater 
and  more  beautiful  work  to  do  and  cannot  come  down. 
It  is  my  doing  of  duty  that  helps  me  to  resist  tempta- 
tion." When  a  man  simply,  honestly,  unaffectedly,  with- 
out cant  or  hypocrisy,  by  lip  or  life,  says  something  of 
that  sort,  then  there  is  something  more  than  respect  for 
him  in  our  hearts,  —  there  is  a  spontaneous  affection  and 
enthusiasm. 

The  self-saoxifice  of  the  Christian  is  always  an  echo 


THE  POSITIVENESS   OF   THE  DIVINE   LIFE.  367 

of  the  self-sacrifice  of  Christ.  It  is  true  just  in  proper 
tion  as  it  copies  that  perfect  pattern.  The  Christian's 
self-surrender  is  called  a  being  "  crucified  to  the  world,' 
taking  its  very  name  from  the  crucifixion  of  our  Lord. 
When,  then,  we  turn  to  Christ's  crucifixion  to  get  there 
ihe  key  to  the  character  of  the  crucifixion  of  the  Christian 
we  see,  I  am  sure,  what  I  have  just  been  speaking  of.  How 
different,  how  utterly  different  that  sacrifice  of  Calvary 
is  from  all  the  most  heroic  sacrifices  that  heroic  men 
have  made  under  the  pressure  of  hard  necessity.  How 
its  positive  power  shines  out  through  it.  It  is  not  sim- 
ply the  giving  up  of  something,  it  is  the  laying  hold  of 
something  too.  He  who  suffers  is  evidently  conquering 
fear  by  the  present  power  of  a  confident  hope,  a  triumph- 
ant certainty.  It  is  because  He  is  walking  in  the  Spirit 
that  He  is  able  so  victoriously  not  to  fulfil  the  lusts  of  the 
flesh.  It  was  because  He  clung  to  His  Father  that  he 
came  strong  out  of  Gethsemane. 

I  think  that  no  one  reads  the  story  of  the  Saviour's 
crucifixion  without  feeling  underneath  it  all  a  certain  un- 
dertone of  triumph,  a  latent  joyousness  which  is  never 
lost  through  all  its  horror.  Here  are  the  fearful  circum- 
stances, the  brutal  soldiers,  the  cowardly  governor,  the 
mocking  dress,  the  nails  driven  through  the  quivering 
hands,  the  groans,  the  taunts,  the  weeping  women,  the 
darkness,  —  everything  to  make  it  horrible,  —  and  yet, 
anderneath  it  all  there  runs  a  current  of  confident  and 
expectant  joy.  What  does  it  mean  ?  No  doubt,  in  part, 
it  is  the  accumulated  sense  of  joy  which  has  gathered 
tbdre  from  the  subsequent  experience  of  the  multitudes 
who,  iz.  all  ages,  have  found  at  that  cross  salvation.  But 
it  is  not  ail  this.     Even  those  who  ^tood  aroxmd  and  wit- 


368  THE  POSITIVENESS  OF  THE  DIVINE  LIFE. 

nessed  the  crucifixion  must  have  felt  it.  It  surely  was 
in  the  mind  of  that  centurion.  It  is  the  clear  convictioc 
that  we  are  witnessing  there  upon  the  cross,  not  merely 
the  murder  of  a  body,  but  the  triumph  of  a  soul ;  not 
merely  the  humbling  and  wounding  and  lacerating  of  a 
flesh,  but  the  exaltation,  the  coronation  of  a  spirit.  Dear 
friends,  the  New  Testament  talks  about  our  being  cruci 
fied  with  Christ.  Have  you  never,  in  your  own  suffering 
or  in  some  suffering  you  watched,  had  opened  to  you 
strange  new  glimpses  of  the  complete  meaning  of  tho8*> 
words  ?  Have  you  never  been  surprised  by  detecting  be- 
neath your  sorrow  that  undertone  of  triumph,  that  latent 
joyousness  which  makes  the  wonder  of  your  Lord's 
"  Put  to  death  in  the  flesh,  but  quickened  in  the  Spirit,' 
have  you  never  found  your  cross  too  a  lifting-up,  the  ever- 
lasting parable  of  the  thorns  that  made  a  crown  repeat- 
ing itself  for  you. 

Indeed,  how  through  the  whole  life  of  Jesus  the  sub- 
ject that  I  am  preaching  to  you  about  to-day,  the  posi- 
tiveness  of  the  Divine  Life,  found  its  abundant  illustration. 
He  was  the  sinless  man.  Yet  in  Him,  just  as  in  you  or 
me,  were  all  these  lusts  of  the  flesh,  all  these  passions 
and  appetites,  that  make  our  sins.  Who  can  be  thankful 
enough  for  that  story  of  the  Temptation,  the  story  of 
the  Saviour  in  the  wilderness  with  the  Devil,  and  that 
other  story  of  Gethsemane,  both  of  which  tell  us  so 
clearly  that  the  same  weaknesses  that  are  in  us  were  in 
their  germs,  the  self  same  things,  in  Him  ?  And  yet  He 
never  sinned.  His  sinlessness,  even  if  He  had  done  noth- 
mg  else  for  our  salvation,  would  stand  out  still  for  the 
most  saving  fact  for  man  that  the  world  ever  saw.  There 
ia  something  very  touching  in  the  way  in  which  the  world 


THE  POSITIVENESS   OF   THE  DIVINE   LIFE.  369 

of  men,  so  full  of  sin  and  of  the  consciousness  ol  sin, 
has  clung  about  that  certainty  of  the  one  sinless  man. 
Whatever  else  they  believed  or  disbelieved  about  Him, 
men  could  not  let  it  go,  this  assurance  that  there  has  been 
once  here  a  man  like  us  who  did  not  sin.  And  yet  a  large 
part  of  the  fascination  which  has  kept  men's  eyes  fast- 
ened upon  Him  certainly  comes  not  from  the  mere  fact 
of  His  sinlessness,  but  from  its  quality.  It  is  of  just  the 
kind  that  holds  men's  hearts  and  kindles  their  enthusi- 
asm. And  its  quality  is  positiveness.  If  Jesus  had  lived 
a  guarded,  cautious  life,  forever  trying  merely  not  to  do 
wrong,  His  character  might  have  been  described  in  lect- 
ures on  moral  philosophy  from  a  professor's  chair;  but 
it  would  never  have  been  taken  home  as  it  has  been 
taken  into  the  world's  very  heart  of  hearts.  It  was  be- 
cause His  sinlessness  was  holiness  that  the  world  seized 
on  it.  The  reason  why  He  did  not  serve  the  Devil  was 
the  Godhood  of  which  He  was  full.  Nothing  can  be 
more  unlike  the  repressive  theories  of  virtue  in  their 
methods  and  results  than  the  way  in  which  Christ  lived 
His  positive  life,  full  of  force  and  salvation. 

Think  back  one  moment  from  the  God  incarnate  to  the 
God  revealed,  from  Jesus  to  the  Father.  What  shall  we 
say  about  the  dear  and  awful  life  of  God  our  Maker  and 
our  King  ?  He  does  no  sin.  And  why  ?  Is  it  a  blas- 
phemy to  ask  the  question  ?  Is  it  not  good  for  us  to  ask 
it,  if  in  trying  to  answer  it  we  have  to  realize  the  su- 
preme and  awful  positiveness  of  the  life  of  God  ?  He 
does  no  sin  because  of  the  completeness  of  His  infinite 
goodness,  because  from  end  to  end  of  His  unmeasured 
nature  holiness  and  love  fill  completely  His  every  ca- 
pacity and  thought. 


870  THE  rOSITIVENESS  OF  THE  DIVINE  LIFl. 

Aud  now  how  shall  we  bring  all  this  to  our  own  lii^et 
and  fix  it  there  ?  Shall  we  not  say  to  cne  another,  Let  ua 
pray  God  for  a  positive  life.  Not  merely  a  life  that  is 
not  bad,  but  a  good  life,  truly  and  spiritually  and  deeply 
good.  You  are  tempted  to  steal.  Do  not  stand  over  the 
object  which  you  covet,  making  perpetually  resolutions 
not  to  touch  it ;  but  go,  throw  yourseK  into  some  honest, 
brave,  healthy  work,  that  shall  establish  for  you  right 
and  fair  relations  with  your  fellow-men,  and  then  the 
mean  life  of  the  thief  will  lose  its  enticement  for  you  bo 
entirely  that  you  vrill  wonder  how  you  ever  could  have 
tolerated  the  thought  of  stealing  for  an  hour.  If  you  are 
tempted  to  skepticism,  do  not  spend  your  time  in  try- 
ing not  to  disbelieve,  do  not  study  too  many  books  of 
answers  to  objections.  Even  if  they  solve  your  doubts, 
they  keep  your  religion  in  a  low  tone.  But  set  yourself 
where  the  manliest  faith  is  living  its  bravest  Hfe.  Set 
what  little  faith  you  have  to  doing  its  best  work,  so  't 
will  grow  into  more.  Make  more  of  what  you  do  believe 
than  of  what  you  do  not  believe.  I  have  heard  men  say, 
"I  believe  nothing!  "  "Well,"  I  ask  them,  "and  what  is 
it  that  you  don't  believe  ?  "  And  then  they  specify  some 
minor  point,  some  comparative  trifle.  "  But,"  I  say  to 
them,  "  do  you  not  believe  in  God  and  in  his  help,  and 
Jesus  and  the  Holy  Spirit  and  the  everlasting  life?" 
"Oh,  yes,"  the  answer  is,  "I  believe  all  those."  And  yet 
the  man  has  been  so  busy  thinking  about  what  he  did 
not  believe  that  all  these  which  he  did  believe  have  gone 
for  nothing,  and  have  grown  into  no  earnest  faithful  life. 

So  everywhere  positives,  not  negatives.  The  way  to 
get  out  of  self-love  is  to  love  God.  Do  we  not  see  what 
Paul  was  teaching  the  Galatians  when  he  said,  "  Wali 


THE  POSrriVENESS   OF   THE   DIVINE  LIFE.  3/1 

in  the  Spirit,  and  ye  shall  not  fulfil  the   lust    of  th« 
flesh"? 

And  to  help  us  to  this  positive  life  we  have  this  posi- 
tive salvation,  these  positive  things  fairly  revealed  to  us, 
God's  will,  Christ's  love,  and  the  eternal  life.  It  is  no 
hard  master  that  stands  over  us.  It  is  the  King  in  Hia 
beauty.  Before  Him  repentance  and  faith  become  but 
one  perfect  act.  When  we  really  get  the  scales  off  our 
eyes  and  see  Him,  the  struggle  of  life  wiU  be  over.  We 
shall  not  have  to  leave  our  sins  to  go  to  Him,  as  if  they 
were  two  acts.  The  going  of  the  soui  to  Him  will  be 
itself  the  easy  casting  away  of  sin,  the  easy  mastery  of 
this  world  which  masters  us  so  now.  May  God  grant  il 
for  oa  alL 


Date  Due 


BROOKS 

Purpose  anduse 
of  comfort , 


^i   -  Liid.  Hon, 


i- 


